(Updates with newspaper report of imminent release) BERLIN, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Three German intelligence agents arrested in Kosovo on suspicion of throwing explosives at an EU office will be released and will return home on Friday, a German newspaper said. The Sueddeutsche Zeitung, citing government officials in Pristina, said in an early issue of its Friday edition that the three would be released for lack of evidence. They would be brought back to Berlin by plane on Friday, it said. Earlier, Thomas Oppermann, who chairs the German parliamentary committee overseeing intelligence operations, said the government had informed the committee the three worked for Germany's BND intelligence agency in Kosovo. "They were operating there for the BND," he told reporters after the committee met in Berlin. He declined to say what their assignment had been. The explosive charge was thrown on Nov. 14 at the International Civilian Office (ICO), the office of EU Special Representative Pieter Feith, who oversees Kosovo's governance, but caused only minor damage. "We don't have any indication that the three German officials in Kosovo had any connection to the attack," said Oppermann, a member of the Social Democrats, the junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government. He called for the immediate release of the three men who were detained on Nov. 20. The three were ordered to be detained until Dec. 22 after being questioned by a Pristina district court judge. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in February after nine years under U.N. stewardship and is recognised by more than 50 countries, including Germany. Four days before the bomb attack, its leaders rejected a plan by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for the deployment of an EU police and justice mission, EULEX. (Reporting by Sabine Siebold; Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
