Hamburg - The Munich Chief of Police Wilhelm Schmidbauer was targeted by would-be-robbers in the South African city of Cape Town, German media reported on Tuesday.

Ironically, Schmidbauer was in South Africa to discuss, amongst other things, co-operation between Bavaria and South Africa for the
2010 World Cup, with one of the areas of co-operation being security.

The sueddeutsche website said that the car in which Schmidbauer and an official of a foundation where traveling after a visit to a police station was surrounded by five youths, who tried to open the car doors and the boot.

When the driver noticed what was happening, he immediately sped of.

Schmidbauer played the incident down. "That is nothing special for Cape Town. You have to be careful here," he said.

The policeman arrived in South Africa on the weekend with the Head of the Bavarian State Chancellery Siegfried Schneider, who told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in a telephone interview from South Africa that they had offered their help to the Western Cape Province. "But we will not force ourselves upon them."

Security around the World Cup next year remains an area of concern, although South African officials have said they are confident of having the situation under control. (dpa)