Foreign Minister Wants US Nukes out of Germany
Spiegel Online 10 April 2009
… US President Barack Obama’s recent calls for “a world without nuclear weapons” may have been slammed by some critics as dangerously naive. But it has prompted German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier to come up with his own, more achievable goal: a Germany without American nuclear weapons.
“These weapons are militarily obsolete today,” Steinmeier told SPIEGEL, explaining that he would take steps to ensure that the remaining US warheads “are removed from Germany.” …
With his remarks, Steinmeier, who is the center-left Social Democratic Party’s official candidate for chancellor in September general elections, is taking the opposite stance from Chancellor Angela Merkel. The German leader told the German parliament, the Bundestag, shortly before the recent NATO summit, that the German government still fully supported the NATO doctrine of “nuclear sharing,” whereby non-nuclear states such as Germany host third-party nukes in order to get more say in decision-making. ..
