Bratislava  - Slovak parliament Friday agreed to deploy up to 16 additional troops with NATO's International Security Assistance Force mission in Afghanistan in
2009.

The 150-seat house voted 134-0 to expand Slovakia's contingent by up to 11 troops and five military medics.

The troops are to guard an airport in southern city of Kandahar, while the medics are to serve in the southern Uruzgan province during the August presidential election, army spokesman Mario Pazicky told the German Press Agency dpa.

Lawmakers thus boosted the 2009 limit for Afghanistan from 246 to 262 troops. Slovakia currently has 231 soldiers mostly in the southern Afghan provinces, Pazicky said.

One lawmaker abstained from the vote, four did not vote and 11 were not present. Slovakia, a former Soviet satellite that shed communism in 1989, joined NATO in 2004.(dpa)