4.45pm
New Zealand's Special Air Service soldiers serving in Afghanistan will be home by Christmas.
Sources told NZPA the current rotation was to end in the near future and it was very unlikely they would be replaced.
Prime Minister Helen Clark, who very rarely comments on the movements of the elite troops, said
recently that the small size of New Zealand's defence forces meant it was impossible to rotate troops endlessly.
"At some point people need to come home and regroup, retrain and regenerate," Miss Clark said then.
Around 30-40 SAS troops have been serving in Afghanistan at any one time since New Zealand offered the United States military assistance for its "war on terrorism", known as Operation Enduring Freedom.
New Zealand's response followed the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The frigate Te Kaha was recently sent to the Middle East until the middle of next year to take part in the wider anti-terrorism campaign. It has also offered an Orion aircraft, but this has not yet been deployed.
The United States is preparing for a potential attack on Iraq by massing its military forces in the Middle East, but the New Zealand Government has so far ruled out any involvement in such an operation unless it is sanctioned by the United Nations.
As the SAS prepare to come home, Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff arrives in Afghanistan this weekend for talks with the government that replaced the Taleban regime toppled by a US-led invasion.
Mr Goff is expected to discuss future New Zealand assistance to Afghanistan.
NZPA also understand that an SAS soldier whose left foot was amputated following a land mine explosion in Western Afghanistan has already returned to New Zealand. He also suffered bone fractures.
Three soldiers were in a 4WD vehicle that hit a landmine while on a routine patrol in October. The two other SAS soldiers were seriously hurt in the incident, but have recovered from their injuries.
The unnamed soldier had been treated in a US military hospital after US surgeons unsuccessfully tried to save his foot. A New Zealand medical team escorted him home.
Thousands of landmines dot Afghanistan, dating back to the Russian invasion in the 1980s.
- NZPA
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