Against the backdrop of increasing German troop deployments abroad, Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for improvements to the country's army, the Bundeswehr.

"That's why we need to ask ourselves, fundamentally, if the structures of our forces are sufficient for the future," the chancellor, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, told the weekly Die Zeit.

Merkel went on to note that, measured against gross domestic product, Germany spends less on its army than Finland, Norway and Holland and considerably less than Italy, France, Britain or the United States. "You won't be able to say that the defense expenditures in the next 20 years will be sacrosanct," said Merkel. No significant hikes in spending are expected in 2007 or 2008, but she hinted they could come later. "A German government just can't say: Please, no new conflicts in the coming decades because we cannot afford it," she told the paper.

Merkel's comments came under heavy criticism from Oskar Lafontaine, the firebrand left-wing former chief of the Social Democratic Party, who now chairs the Left Party in Germany's parliament, the Bundestag. Lafontaine described the security and foreign policy of the Merkel government as "dilettantish" and said that the early debate over sending German troops to Lebanon had been a mistake. He accused some in the government of "manically seeking to send German soldiers all over the world." He added, "If Germany participates in wars in other countries that violate human rights, then perhaps the families of the victims will come up with the idea of conducting attacks against Germany."