West Germany Anger and Recrimination

By James O. Jackson/Bonn

West Germany's Bundestag is normally an orderly parliament, courtly in its procedures and respectful of its leaders. But last week the Bundestag convened in an unaccustomed turmoil of accusation and recrimination over West Germany's role in building Libya's suspected chemical-weapons plant at Rabta. Members shouted angry questions at a government spokesman, to the visible discomfort of a dour and silent Chancellor Helmut Kohl. "Once again our history has caught up with us," said Norbert Gansel, arms-control spokesman for the opposition Social Democratic Party, referring to the country's Nazi heritage. "Once again the evil, blinkered German is there in the cartoons and the editorials, and the federal government has made an ugly contribution to it."

The questioning produced the Bonn government's clearest admission to date of the real purpose of the facility, which Libya still maintains is a pharmaceutical plant. Said Chancellery Chief of Staff Wolfgang Schauble: "On the basis of secret-service intelligence reports, we must conclude that the plant in Rabta is capable of producing chemical weapons."

Schauble also disclosed that the government knew of the involvement of West German firms in the construction of the plant last May, three months earlier than previous reports indicated. That statement only deepened the mystery of why Kohl not only failed to act on his knowledge of West Germany's role in the project until prodded by U.S. press leaks, but also angrily denied what he knew to be true.

Nor was Washington alone in conveying its alarm to Bonn over the Libyan project. Israeli intelligence officials also established the complicity of West German firms and in July notified their counterparts in Bonn of their findings. Unlike the U.S., however, Israel did not try to take the story public. One reason might be that West Germany has become the Israeli defense industry's best foreign customer. Bonn buys $300 million worth of ammunition and spare parts for tank guns and electronic equipment annually, helping provide employment for 7,000 Israeli workers.

Many West Germans were less concerned with the substance of the allegations against their country's exporters than with the damage to relations with the U.S. The public feud over the plant that Kohl carried on with Washington for nearly two weeks seemed to gather strength from other issues. These include U.S. pressure to continue low-flying Air Force exercises over West German territory, despite several accidents that have claimed civilian lives. Said Volker Ruhe, deputy parliamentary leader of Kohl's Christian Democratic Party: "These shrill tones show that the ice has become much thinner."

All authorities agree that the Rabta plant, which is believed to be capable of producing commodities other than chemical weapons, does not violate international law. Moreover, some or even all of the West German firms so far implicated in the project may have remained within the bounds of West German law. But that is not saying much. The country's export regulations are among the loosest in the world. The Economics Ministry processes some 70,000 chemical-industry export applications each year. Even the tighter regulations announced in the wake of the Libyan scandal, Economics Minister Helmut Haussmann maintained, do not guarantee that unscrupulous manufacturers will refrain from conducting business as usual.

With reporting by Ron Ben-Yishai/Jerusalem