(Translated by https://www.hiragana.jp/)
German Minister Resigns Over Afghan Airstrike - The New York Times

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German Minister Resigns Over Afghan Airstrike

BERLIN — A German cabinet official resigned Friday, saying he accepted “political responsibility” for accusations that the military withheld information about an airstrike in Afghanistan in September that killed civilians as well as insurgents.

The announcement by the official, Franz Josef Jung, 60, who was defense minister at the time of the airstrike, added to the disquiet in political and military circles here after the resignations of two other high-profile figures in the Berlin defense establishment on Thursday.

Mr. Jung, who had shifted to the post of labor minister, resigned less than a day after standing before the German Parliament to defend his role in the widening controversy over the bombing.

Calls for his departure grew louder after his speech, and at a news conference in Berlin on Friday, Mr. Jung bowed to the growing pressure from opposition politicians and a sharply critical German press.

“I decided to take this step in order to facilitate the unrestrained successful work of the federal government and to avert damage to the German military,” Mr. Jung told reporters.

This is a difficult moment for Chancellor Angela Merkel and for the NATO allies, who are trying to increase support for the mission in Afghanistan even as the security situation deteriorates.

At a news conference later on Friday to announce that Germany’s family minister, Ursula von der Leyen, would take over the Labor Ministry, Mrs. Merkel praised Mr. Jung for his decision to step down, saying that “serving his country has always come first for him.”

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Franz Josef Jung, former German Defense Minister and current Labor Minister announced his resignation at a new conference on Friday.Credit...Gero Breloer/Associated Press

Mr. Jung’s resignation came a day after Germany’s top military officer, Gen. Wolfgang Schneiderhan, and one of Mr. Jung’s top deputies while he was defense minister, State Secretary Peter Wichert, were forced to step down. The men submitted their resignations after a German newspaper reported that information about civilian casualties had been withheld from Parliament and from prosecutors in connection with the airstrike, which took place near Kunduz in northern Afghanistan on Sept. 4.

The commander of the German base called in air support to destroy two tanker trucks hijacked by Taliban insurgents, and the airstrike killed a number of civilians, probably dozens. In the days after the attack, Mr. Jung steadfastly claimed that only insurgents had been killed, but the mass-circulation newspaper Bild on Thursday reported that officials in the ministry were aware almost immediately that there had been civilian deaths.

After the election in September, Mrs. Merkel added new coalition partners to her cabinet, the pro-business Free Democrats, replacing Mr. Jung with the popular young politician Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who had been lauded for his work as economy minister during the economic crisis. Mr. Jung’s move from the high-profile job of defense minister to the less important position of labor minister was widely viewed in the capital as a demotion linked to the handling of the Kunduz airstrike.

Mr. Jung also struggled over the summer to find the right tone as the increasing violence in the once peaceful northern part of Afghanistan, where Germany leads the multinational force responsible for security, made the mission more dangerous and harder to sell to a public unsupportive of the country’s participation in Afghanistan. He famously refused to call the conflict “war” even though German soldiers found themselves in sustained combat with a more resilient foe.

After the latest revelations, Mr. Jung appeared to have become too much of a distraction and political liability to remain in the cabinet. His statement before Parliament on Thursday was particularly mystifying to opposition lawmakers: he said that he had learned about the classified report on the airstrike cited by Bild but did not have “concrete information” about it, and apparently forwarded it to NATO investigators without even reading it.

“This was an overdue step,” said Renate Künast, a chairwoman of the opposition Greens in Parliament. “It is the right step.”

“A minister who is responsible for giving such false and misinformation to the Parliament has no place in the cabinet,” she said.

It did not, however, appear likely that the uproar would produce additional resignations beyond Mr. Jung’s. “The new defense minister and chancellor have managed to get rid of this whole affair pretty fast,” said Markus Kaim, head of the international security program at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. “The positive effect might be that now the new minister of defense has the political room for maneuvering to distance himself from his predecessor.”

Mr. Kaim said the latest scandal was a political matter for Berlin and did not affect the German soldiers or their mission in Afghanistan, unlike the original episode in September. “Since the beginning of September, every German officer will be a little more reluctant to ask for air support, everywhere German soldiers a little more hesitant to pull the trigger,” Mr. Kaim said.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: German Cabinet Minister Resigns Over Afghan Raid That Killed Civilians. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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