Germany's armed forces are to continue their deployments in Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and off the coast of Lebanon as part of international missions, lawmakers agreed on Thursday.
The Bundestag, as Germany's parliament is known, extended the mandate for the EU mission Eufor Althea, the NATO mission KFOR and the UN mission UNIFIL in the eastern Mediterranean by a large majority.
The KFOR mission in Kosovo will continue to have up to 400 German soldiers who are there to protect peace and public order in Kosovo, which has seen renewed tensions with Serbia recently. At 25 years, it is the longest continual overseas mission for Germany's Bundeswehr.
In Eufor Althea, up to 50 German soldiers are to help ensure compliance with the Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the Bosnian war in 1995. The Balkan state is still considered a potential centre of conflict, however.
The Bundeswehr can also continue to support the international UNIFIL mission, which has been monitoring the border area between Israel and Lebanon since 1978, by contributing up to 300 soldiers.
A German navy frigate is patrolling in the Mediterranean Sea to prevent the smuggling of weapons to the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia. This serves to stabilize a "key state" in the Middle East, said the Social Democrat parliamentary group's foreign policy spokesman, Nils Schmid.