German Opposition Raps Israeli Submarine Deal

Berlin, June 5, IRNA -- German opposition parties lashed out at Berlin's decision to deliver Dolphin-class submarines to Israel where there are being secretly equipped with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, press reports said here on Monday. The head of the faction of the radical leftist party Die Linke, Gregor Gysi branded the controversial submarine deal "out of the question," saying it would torpedo efforts to promote peace and de-escalation in the volatile Mideast region. He stressed the special relations between Germany and Israel as a result of the Nazi-era mass killings of Jews would "never justify the delivery of armament" to the illegal Jewish state. Gysi voiced alarm over the fact that Israel is fitting the German-built submarines with nuclear warheads. He urged the German government to brief the country's parliament on the deal as quickly as possible and halt all arms exports to Israel. Gysi's remarks were highlighted by senior Social Democratic lawmaker Rolf Muetzenich who said that so far the delivery of submarines was being justified by Berlin as being only a conventional deterrent. He made clear that the government had to inform the German parliament whether nuclear missiles had been deployed on the submarines. Meanwhile, the chairman of the Green faction, Juergen Trittin lamented the fact that Israel did not even meet the demands of the German government for the submarine agreement, which included halting the Zionist expansionist settlement policy and allowing the completion of a sewage treatment plant in the Gaza Strip, which is partially financed with German money. The Hamburg-based news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Sunday that Israel is secretly equipping German-built submarines with nuclear missiles. According to the paper, Germany is helping the Zionist regime to develop its military nuclear capabilities. The magazine quoted former high-ranking German defense officials as saying they had always assumed Israel would modify the submarines with nuclear weapons. It also uncovered German foreign ministry documents which showed Berlin had known about Israel's nuclear weapons program since 1961. The last high-level talks for which there is evidence took place in 1977, when then-chancellor Helmut Schmidt discussed the issue with then-Israeli foreign minister Moshe Dayan. The German government has always maintained the position that it is unaware of nuclear weapons being deployed on the submarines. Three submarines have already been delivered to Israel, and three more will be delivered by 2017. In addition, the illegal Jewish state is considering ordering its seventh, eighth and ninth submarines from Germany. Der Spiegel said Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to finance one-third of the cost of the sixth submarine - around 135 million euros (168 million US dollars) - and to allow Israel to defer payment until 2015. A die-hard political ally of the Zionist regime, Germany has been pursuing a long-running policy of providing the illegal Jewish regime with heavily subsidized weapons systems as part of a 1953 reparations agreement linked to the Nazi genocide of Jews. Berlin donated the first two Dolphins to the Israeli navy in the late 1990s. It paid half the 700 million US dollar cost of the third of the diesel-electric boats, heavily modified versions of the Type-209 submarines developed by the Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG shipyard in the north German city of Kiel. Germany has reportedly played a key role in arming the Israeli navy over the past 12 years. The German government has kept silent on its military deals with the Zionist regime, refusing to reveal any details of the contracts. Berlin has become a major arms supplier of the Zionist regime despite a constitutional ban to send weapons to crisis regions. There are no official statistics available on the sale of German weapons to Israel as almost all arms exports to Israel are shrouded in utmost secrecy./end