berlin brief

Tsipi Livni, Israel’s former Foreign Minister and the head of the Kadima party, came to Berlin last week where she met with Foreign Minister Westerwelle. Livni is touring Western capitals to fight, as she said in a speech in Berlin, the deligitimization of the Jewish State of Israel in the free world.

Ms Livni spoke at the Deutsche Parlamentarische Gesellschaft (German Parliamentary Society) on 24 March 2010, at an event hosted by NAFFO (Nahost Friedens Forum/Middle East Peace Forum). (more…)

I found two pieces on German foreign policy in the international media yesterday that I want to draw your attention to.

The first one was in the FT by Bertrand Benoit and Daniel Dombey, entitled “German concerns threaten 9/11 trial evidence”. The authors write:

“Berlin will seek to block evidence collected by German investigators about the September 11 attacks from being used to secure the death penalty in the trial of five alleged conspirators in New York.

The stance could strain relations between chancellor Angela Merkel’s government and the Obama administration.”

Read the full text here (FT, 25 November 2009).

The second piece is by Benjamin Weinthal on Germany and Iran and was published in the Weekly Standard. Weinthal writes:

“Merkel’s new governing coalition with the pro-business Free Democratic party (FDP) might very well bring us Act II of Germany’s impotent Iran foreign policy. The FDP, the party of Germany’s new foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, vehemently rejects curtailing German-Iranian trade, and during the 2002 federal election Westerwelle tolerated the late Jürgen Möllemann’s (a top FDP politician) mass-mailing of election flyers bashing former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. Möllemann’s campaign strategy was widely viewed as the first public use of anti-Semitism to win over voters since the Hitler movement. (more…)

Speaking yesterday at the UN General Assembly’s annual meeting in New York, the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu strongly condemned the speech of Mahmoud Ahmadinedjad on Wednesday, in which the Iranian President again denied the Holocaust.

In his hands, Netanyahu held a document that he had been given during a recent visit to Berlin (read the NY Times article of 27 August, 2009): the original document of a construction plan of Auschwitz concentration camp. (more…)

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives in Berlin today. Coming from London, where he met with PM Gordon Brown and the US envoy Geoge Mitchell (see the BBC reporting), Netanjahu will meet with President Horst Köhler, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier during his two-day visit.

The visit is part of a new joint US-European initiative on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On top of the agenda of the talks in London and Berlin are the settlements and Iran. The Guardian reported that Israel might agree on a settlement freeze in exchange for tougher sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme by the international community.

(more…)