•
Friday, June 8, 1984 25
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Oil and arms
West Germany's leading publisher takes his government
to task for forgetting the lessons of the Holocaust and
leaning strongly towards supplying the most modern
weapons available to avowed foes of the Jewish state.
BY VICTOR M. BIENSTOCK
Special to The Jewish News
The oil-rich Kingom of
Saudi Arabia has probably
a greater weight of arma-
ments per person than any
other country in the world
with the possible exception
of Qaddafi's Libya. And
like Libya, it has little
capacity to employ this tre-
mendous arsenal.
But the Saudi appetite for
weapons is insatiable.
Saudi expenditures for
armaments in the United
States alone exceed $4 bil-
lion a year. The kingdom
has recently contracted
with French defense firms
for an integrated air-
defense system costing be-
tween $3.5-$4 billion — the
biggest arms sale in French
history.
With the Persian Gulf
situation heating up, the
Saudi Arabian regime an-
nounced that it would spend
another $1 billion on air de-
fense! The Reagan Ad-
ministration in the U.S. just
sold 400 Stinger anti-
aircraft missiles to the
Saudis to protect oil instal-
lations from possible Ira-
nian attack.
The Saudi Arabians, not
content with the tremen-
dous weight of weaponry at
hand, are ever on the quest
for more and more weapons
even though they do not
have trained personnel to
use what they have. For
years, they have been put-
ting intense pressure on
West Germany to sell them
some of its highly developed
weapons, particularly the
Leopard II attack tank,
probably the best offensive
tank in the world today.
The West Germans are
vulnerable to Saudi Ara-
bian pressure; Saudi Arabia
is a major trading partner
and is a very important
market for German exports
and services. The German
economy is sluggish, unem-
ployment is relatively high
in the smokestack indus-
tries and the steel and
armaments industries are
increasing their pressure on
Bonn to authorize sales of
arms to the desert kingdom.
The controversy over pro-
posed German arms sales to
Saudi Arabia has erupted
again with publication by
Axel -Springer, a major
German publisher, of
charges that the Arab oil
states, including Saudi
Arabia, seek the destruc-
tion of the State of Israel.
Springer is well-known as
a staunch friend of Israel
'
and his benefactions par-
ticularly for the beautifica-
tion and improvement of
Jerusalem and to the
Weizmann Institute have
been considerable.
Writing in his mass-
circulation daily, Die Welt,
Springer, reminded his fel-
low Germans of the late
Chancellor Konrad
Adenauer's admonition to
the German people: "Re-
main a faithful friend of the
Jews and of the State of Is-
rael."
He described the Pales-
tine Liberation Organiza-
tion as a tool of the Arab oil
states, designed and per-
petuated for the sole pur-
pose of bringing about the
destruction of Israel whose
existence in the heart of the
Moslem world, he said, was
intolerable to Islamic fana-
tics.
The PLO, Springer
charged, is "a welcome tool
for the destruction of the
'Zionist provocation.' It fits
the picture that this terror
organization receives large
amounts of dollars from
Saudi Arabia, Libya and
Iran."
The Arab oil states, he as-
serted, "want the organiza-
tion (PLO) to remain viru-
lent in order to make sure
that a reconciliation be-
tween Arab Palestinians
and Israel can never come
about."
He rejected the claim that
Saudi Arabia should be pro-
vided with more modern
arms because it was a
stabilizing factor in the
Middle East, declaring that
"Saudi Arabia is neither
morally, nor militarily a
stabilizing factor. On the
contrary, the undemocratic,
orientally absolutist regime
of princes with its feudal
features considerably adds
to the unrest and instability
of the region."
. Saudi Arabia, he pointed
out, "shows no social sol-
idarity with the poorer
countries in the region. In-
stead of giving aid to under-
developed Arab states sha-
ken by revolutionary unrest
(like Sudari) the Saudi
oligarchy pays tribute to the
PLO and Syria and floods
the free world with $1 bil-
lion investments for private
luxury or personal
safeguards in case the
dynasty should fall, an
event obviously feared."
The German publisher
stressed an aspect fre-
quently noted by experts on
the Middle East — the mili-
tary incompetency of Saudi
Arabia. He declared that "it
is unrealistic to maintain
that the Saudis could play a
better role as a stabilizing
factor in the region if they
got German arms. Militar-
ily, the Saudis are incompe-
tent and inefficient in the
areas of strategy, opera-
tions, tactics and weapons
technology."
This, he said, held for the
officers as well as the troops.
He predicted that unless
maintenance crews' accom-
panied the troop carriers
and tracked vehicles sold to
the Saudis or unless they
were manned by Palesti-
nian, Jordanian or Iraqi
"mercenaries," the equip-
ment would quickly become
unusable.
Saudi Arabian troops,
Springer asserted, "are not
fit for serious military oper-
ations and cannot, there-
fore, promote strategic sta-
bility in the Middle East."
To dump more modern
weapons on the kingdom, he
declared, would simply be to
set up ordance depots for
other Arab forces "for the
day of a new war against Is-
rael."
The Springer article drew
a sharp rejoinder from
former Minister of, State
Hans-Jurgen Wischnewski,
a member of the German
Social Democratic Party's
governing board and
chairman of the Bundes-
tag's Goreign Relations
Committee. Wischnewski,
who is considered an expert
on Arab affairs, asserted
that he himself was opposed
to any sale of arms by the
Federal Republid "to coun-
tries outside of our alliance"
but he denounced
Springer's criticism of
Saudi Arabia as "insult-
ing."
•
,‘-.;•; 44,:0;;,44,:•.%
Axel Springer:
The Saudis have been pressuring the test Germans for years to sell
them some of their highly-developed weapons.
His reply, published in
Die Welt along with a rebut-
tal by Springer, staunchly
defended Saudi Arabia and
its relations with West
Germany. Saudi Arabia, he
insisted, "has always raised
the voice of reason in OPEC
in the interest of the West-
ern industrialized states."
Berating Springer for his
charges against the Saudia
Arabians, he asked rhetori-
cally: "Did you forget that
this country has not only
supplied us with oil but has
also placed considerable or-
ders with German indus-
tries? Did you forget that we
have accepted loans from
that country? Did you forget
that it has helped us in dif-
ficult times?"
Springer replied to these
questions in his rebuttal
and launched a further at-
tack on Saudi treatment of
foreign and native workers
in the kingdom, with the
implication that the Social
Democrats had been dere-
lict in not investigating the
conditions of workers in
.Saudi Arabia and in failing
to come to their assistance.
When the Saudis place
orders with German firms
"and deliver oil for good dol-
lars," he commented, "they
,
do, after all, act in their own had made the loans neces-
well-understood interest. sary.
But they acted greatly
"Bonn should have fore-
against the interests of the seen that we would be asked
West and of the developing to pay a political price for
nations," he pointed out, the loans," he said. "With
"when in 1973; they, to- the demand for the supply of
gether with the Shah, im- German arms, this has
posed the oil boycott and come true."
forced up prices."
Denying any intent to in-
Referring to the Saudi sult Saudia Arabia, he con-
loans to West ,Germany, cluded - by stressng that "I
Springer accused the Social would feel much better if
Democratic government of the Saudi Kingdom were
former Chancellor Helmut really a reliable partner of
Schmidt, in which Wis- the West and if it stopped
chnewski served, of having directly oy indirectly
pursued the policies which threatening Israel."
t 0.. I
I' 0
1•
• .
.
• I
ir • • • • • 0,11.t. t.