Berlin  - Former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt expressed concern on Wednesday that the military deployment in Afghanistan was not achieving its objectives.

"With the operations to date - which have now been running for almost a decade - the increasingly unfocussed target is clearly not achievable," the 90-year-old said in an interview with the weekly Die Zeit.

Germany is the third-biggest contributor to NATO-led military forces in Afghanistan after the US and Britain, but a majority of Germans are opposed to the deployment.

Schmidt, who has also campaigned against German arms exports, said the West had not managed to remove al-Qaeda's structures, which had shifted to western Pakistan.

"It could have been known beforehand that this goal was not achievable with the means available," Schmidt said, adding that he had been sceptical from the start of the German armed forces mission to Afghanistan.

"However, I do have the greatest respect for the young men and women who risk their lives there," the elder statesman said, adding that he did not want to influence their readiness to obey their government's orders.

The subject briefly erupted onto Germany's election campaign early September, when 99 Afghans died in a German-ordered airstrike on two fuel tankers seized by the Taleban.

Schmidt criticized the lack of parliamentary debate about the Afghan deployment, which he said should have been a key campaign issue ahead of Sunday's general election.

Around 4,500 German troops are stationed in Afghanistan, taking part in what the government has termed a "robust stabilization mission."

Schmidt, a member of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), was German chancellor from 1974 to 1982.  dpa