This Week in Germany

The following is a roundup of this week’s political news in Germany. Check back every sunday evening as I plan to make this a ComingAnarchy tradition! Please excuse the fact that the links are mostly to German language sites. There is precious little about German politics in the American/British news and thus I had to translate most of these.

German Defense Minister Peter Struck, after conferring with his NATO colleagues, drew a positive balance. He said that Germany has been praised in Nice for their successful mission as International Security Forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Even before the meeting in Nice, Struck discussed a possible extension of the German mission to al of Northern Afghanistan and said Germany is ready to take responsibility for the entire North.

According to German Defense Minister Peter Struck, Germany will make around 50 military observers available to the Sudananese government in the coming week. Struck said the Federal Cabinet will pass the necessary law at an international security conference in Berlin. The German observers would be ready as the Bundestag already passed the necessary resolution on April 22nd.

Not Guilty with Bitter After-taste

With the decision of the German high court, the Morrocan Mzoudi is definitively not guilty on charges of of the murder of over 3,000 people on Sept. 11th. There was no evidence that he assisted one of the pilots who flew into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11. Now, Hamburg wants to deport him as soon as possible but what awaits him at home?

The article goes on to discuss whether Morocco will try him as a terorrist and whether the US will extradite or kidnap him from there and haul him off to Gitmo or elsewhere. We can only hope.

BERLIN – Straining relations with Turkey, the German Bundestag parliament adopted a resolution on Thursday condemning the massacre of up to 1.5 million ethnic Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 90 years ago. The resolution criticised the current government of Turkey for “neglecting to address the issue” in a forthright manner. Turkey’s foreign minister Abdullah Gul denounced the resolution as “irresponsible, appalling and injurious” to relations between the two countries.

Germany criticises US Security Council proposal

BERLIN - Increasing the number of permanent seats in the UN Security Council by just two was not enough, a German government spokesman said in Berlin on Friday, a day after Washington announced its policy on reform. Deputy government spokesman Thomas Steg said Berlin was sticking to the ‘G4’ proposal it has made jointly with Brazil, India and Japan for all four to obtain new seats. It was important that developing countries gained more representation, he added. US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said on Thursday that Washington proposed Japan and one other nation receive permanent seats.