This Week in Germany VII

Your weekly German News courtesy of Chirol. Notice the first article says “Reichstag” which is a MAJOR error on their part. There hasn’t been a Reichstag since the Nazis. The two houses of Germany’s “congress” are the Bundestag and Bundesrat. Using the word “Reich” is a serious no-no.

Reichstag plane crash sparks security debate in Germany

BERLIN - A plane crash in the heart of Berlin’s government quarter and the series of deadly terrorist attacks in the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh and London have triggered a debate about security risks to Germany just as the nation gears up for an election.

While Germany Transport Minister Manfred Stolpe has announced plans to ban flights by private planes over central Berlin, the government and opposition have been battling it out over whether the army should be deployed within the country to help tackle terrorist threats.

Schroeder remains optimistic on bid for UN seat

BERLIN - Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder insisted in a newspaper interview published Saturday that Germany could still secure a seat on an expanded United Nations’ Security Council, despite resistance from China and Washington. Schroeder told the daily Bild that opposition to enlarging the security council was aimed primarily at other nations seeking a permanent seat, rather than Germany. Winning a permanent seat is one of the key foreign policy pillars of Schroeder’s Social Democrat-Green Party coalition. Germany, along with Brazil, India and Japan, is a member of the so-called Group of Four (G4).

BERLIN - Germany’s highest court will rule late next month on whether planned early national elections are constitutional, a court spokeswoman said Friday. The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe will begin deliberations on August 9 and is expected to issue its ruling late in the month, the spokeswoman said. This means the decision will comes just weeks before the planned September 18 German general election. Several members of parliament lodged complaints with the court which argue that early elections are unconstitutional because Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder still has his slim majority in the Bundestag, parliament’s lower chamber.

WASHINGTON - A Yemeni cleric convicted of aiding the al- Qaeda terrorist network and Palestinian militants was sentenced Thursday to 75 years in prison. A federal judge in New York gave Sheikh Mohammed Ali Hassan al- Moayad the maximum sentence, reports said. Al-Moayad was arrested in Germany in 2003 and extradited to the United States after he got caught in a U.S. sting operation. During a secretly-taped conversation with two undercover FBI agents in a Frankfurt hotel room, al-Moayad said he would give the Hamas group USD 2 million, prosecutors said. They also alleged that the Islamic cleric had given USD 20 million to al-Qaeda.

KARLSRUHE, GERMANY – Germany’s high court Friday ruled that it is libellous to call a public figure a “Gypsy Jew” in print, saying the term is offensive to both Jews and Gypsies and conjures up the spectre of Nazi atrocities against both groups. In handing down its decision, the Federal Constitutional Court upheld a lower court verdict against a right-wing extremist who had printed up leaflets calling one of Germany’s best known Jewish officials a “Zigeunerjude” (Gypsy Jew). The court said the term, used in print by former right-wing Republican Party official Hermann Josef Reichertz, was libellous inflammatory Nazi jargon. Under post-war German law, use of Nazi slogans or catchwords is banned except for historical or theatrical purposes.

ROME - The campaign reform at the United Nations’ Security Council heated up on Thursday after a German newspaper accused Italy of using financial coercion to gain support for its proposal, hours after Italy had done the same with Germany. According to Financial Times Deutschland, Italy has threatened to freeze EUR 220 million worth of economic aid to Albania unless Tirana stops backing a proposal submitted by Germany, Japan, India and Brazil – a group known as the G4. Italy, which at the helm of the ‘Uniting for Consensus’ group of countries is pushing for an alternative blueprint, on Thursday rejected the charge as groundless.

BERLIN - Angela Merkel plans moves to improve relations with the United States if she defeats Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Germany’s upcoming general election, a top member of her Christian Democratic Union party said Thursday. “There has been some bad damage and we will change this,” said Christian Democratic alliance (CDU/CSU) foreign policy expert Wolfgang Schaeuble after returning from talks in Washington Wednesday with U.S. President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Schaeuble said Chancellor Schroeder’s government had harmed the old fundamental trust between the U.S. and Germany and that a Merkel government would make efforts to correct this. The European Union (E.U.) and transatlantic ties were two sides of the same coin and could not be played off against each other, he said.