Hoist on His Own Petard: German Foreign Ministry Reveals Genscher’s Perfidiousness

The Center for Security Policy today cited official German documents to rebut claims made in Washington this morning by visiting German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher, claims to the effect that his country’s officials bear no responsibility for the transfer of militarily relevant technology to Iraq. The Center similarly dismissed as laughable Genscher’s contention that Germany is providing new leadership in safeguarding Western technology.

In a joint press conference today with Secretary of State James Baker, Genscher stated that, "Although Germany [i.e., the West German government] has not delivered any weapons to Iraq for now 30 years in contrast to what many other countries have done, German citizens have violated German legislation by participating in the production of such weapons. We have now tightened the legislation which enables us to stop such activities. But Germany cannot stand alone in trying to bring about this objective. What we now need is the cooperation of the world community by carrying out an embargo on all of these weapons…." (Emphasis added.)

In fact, a 4 January 1990 paper produced by Genscher’s own Foreign Ministry belies these soothing statements. This document was obtained by the popular German television program, Panorama, and reveals that the modernization and upgrading of the Iraqi SCUD missiles was actually promoted and financed by the federal government in Bonn. In a program aired on 29 January 1991, Panorama concluded that the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Federal Office of the Economy in Eschborn — which is responsible for granting export licenses — and the Federal Intelligence Service were fully aware of the true, military character of items they were approving for export to Iraq.

According to an unclassified cable (attached) circulated on the evening of the 29th throughout the U.S. government, Panorama reported that these German agencies knew "that project numbers given in business papers were in fact code numbers for an Iraqi missile program. In spite of this knowledge, the Eschborn office, in isolated instances, granted licenses for some of the part ordered from Germany by Iraq, even after Autumn 1989." Some of these transactions actually received German government-guaranteed financing!

"Genscher’s misrepresentations about past German technology transfers — like previous, false assurances that German companies were not involved in equipping Libya with chemical weapons production capabilities — beg the question: Can Bonn be believed on anything?" said Frank J. Gaffney, the Center’s director.

Gaffney added, "Concerns about wholesale German unreliability are heightened by the transparent inconsistency between Mr. Genscher’s promises about his government’s commitment to sound technology security policies in the future and the concerted effort being made by Bonn to open the floodgates for Western technology transfers to the Soviet Union and other destinations at multilateral export control meetings now underway in Paris."

Even if one were to adopt the most charitable interpretation possible for this disconnect between Genscher’s rhetoric and actual German policy — namely that the Foreign Minister is simply unaware that his desires for a more responsible national policy toward export controls has not yet been translated into official practice — the case is strengthened for the Center’s argument for a moratorium on further liberalization of multilateral technology security arrangements. That is all the more true if a less generous, but more probable, interpretation is in order.