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Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail More Yahoo! Services Account Options New User? Sign Up Sign In Help Yahoo! Search web search Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Africa Europe Latin America Middle East North America Doubts raised on Afghan mission ahead of German vote AFP - Thursday, September 24 Send IM Story Print German soldiers return after a patrol to a German military base in Kunduz on September 19, 2009. Days before German elections, an influential former chancellor on Wednesday slammed the country's unpopular mission in Afghanistan, a foreign policy headache for whoever wins power. BERLIN (AFP) - – Days before German elections, an influential former chancellor on Wednesday slammed the country's unpopular mission in Afghanistan, a foreign policy headache for whoever wins power. As the race for Sunday's vote hotted up, police raided the headquarters of the NPD, a neo-Nazi party with serious financial problems and next to no chance of winning any seats, after offensive letters were sent to ethnic minority MPs. The election is expected to return Chancellor Angela Merkel to power, but two new opinion polls published on Wednesday confirmed that it is far from certain that she will be able to form her preferred centre-right coalition. Helmut Schmidt, West German chancellor between 1974 and 1982 and still a respected figure in national politics at age 90, said meanwhile that the aims of Western forces in Afghanistan were "ever blurrier" and "not achievable". To stabilise the war-torn country eight years after the US toppled a Taliban regime, "apparently even 200,000 soldiers are not enough," double the size of the current international contingent, Schmidt told the Die Zeit weekly. The top commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has warned President Barack Obama that without additional US troops the NATO-led mission will face defeat. Germany has around 4,200 troops there, the third largest foreign contingent, mostly in the north where conditions have been peaceful compared to the more volatile south and east, allowing a greater focus on reconstruction. But violence has spiked recently, with militants stepping up attacks and forcing the reportedly poorly equipped German contingent into more and more skirmishes. Since 2001, 35 German troops have died, including four this year. With all the main parties supporting the deployment except for the far-left Die Linke, Afghanistan has failed to register as much of an issue in campaigning for Sunday's election. This is the case even after a US air strike this month ordered by a German commander reportedly killed dozens of civilians, and recent threats by Islamic extremists for Germnay to pull out its troops or face attacks on its soil. A poll in business daily Handelsblatt showed voters much more concerned with issues such as unemployment, education and the recession than with Afghanistan. "Voters vote for other things," Henning Riecke from the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) told AFP. "They look out for jobs, at the performance of Germany in the global (financial) crisis and social stability." "We have had more than 30 casualties, we have had the first real fights, with tanks, since World War II," Patrick Keller from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation said. "But this has failed to cause even the slightest stir." Polls show, however, that a majority of Germans want troops to come home, and Afghanistan could well move centre stage in the next parliament, particularly if the election leaves the Social Democrats (SPD) in opposition. It was former SPD chancellor Gerhard Schroeder who first sent troops to Afghanistan. Allegations of widespread fraud in August's presidential election in Afghanistan have also undermined support for the mission. Merkel has tried to head off future problems with a push, backed by France and Britain, for an international conference to pressure the Afghan government to assume more responsibilities so that coalition forces can go home. If there is not sufficient effort to build up the Afghan army and police, "the US will have a second Vietnam, and Germany its first," the Berliner Zeitung daily said in an editorial on Wednesday. Currently, Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) are in an uneasy "grand coalition" with the centre-left SPD. She wants to ditch the SPD in favour of the business-friendly Free Democrats. The Handelsblatt poll, conducted last week, showed more than a quarter of voters still undecided. 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