German candidates clash over Afghanistan exit

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has snubbed a promise by her rival in the upcoming elections to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, saying the mission there continues until its goals are met.

Merkel said she would bring home the Bundeswehr, Germany's military forces, "as soon as possible" but only after their mission was complete.

“We have a goal, and that is self-sustaining security for Afghanistan,” Merkel told public television Sunday.

Her comments came a day after Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeir told Spiegel in an interview that if victorious, his center-left Social Democratic Party would move to negotiate a "concrete schedule" for gradually bringing the soldiers home.

Steinmeier's Social Democrats Party (SPD) is currently sharing power in a fragile grand coalition with Merkel's Christian Democrats Party (CDU).

By the end of this year, the parliamentary mandate which allows Germany to contribute up to 4,500 troops to the NATO mission in Afghanistan expires. It must be renewed if the troops are to remain in the country.

The rising death toll there, however, has made the mission increasingly unpopular in Germany.

The war in Afghanistan looks no closer to defeating the Taliban militancy that has raged in the country since the fall of the Taliban regime following the 2001 US-led invasion.

US Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking officer in the US Army, told CNN on Sunday that the situation in Afghanistan was “deteriorating” and that the insurgents had grown more “sophisticated” in the past eight years.

Germany's parliamentary elections are set to take place on September 27.