France Criticises Germany

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32166, 9 December 1969, Page 17

France Criticises Germany

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) PARIS, December 8. A high French official, in an unusually harsh statement, has said that his Government “is shocked to see abominable (war) criminals walking round free in West - Germany,” the Associated Press reports.

The outburst, and a series of other barbed remarks about West Germany by Mr Jean de Lipkowski, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and No. 2 man in the French Foreign Office, has created speculation in Paris about a shift in the officially warm French attitude toward the Bonn Government A German Embassy spokesman declined all comment on the issue yesterday. Mr Lipkowski said in a National Assembly debate on Friday that “it is distressing that 25 years after World War U we are still asking ourselves * if war criminals

will be tried. In cases of clear murder, the only question involves meting out punishment”

He spoke after being questioned by Communist and Socialist deputies about what the Government was doing to press Germany to try a former S.S. general, Heinz Lammerding, sentenced to death in absentia by a French court Lammerding was commander of a Nazi regiment which wiped out the village of Oradour, burning alive and shooting its 642 inhabitants in 1944.

Now, according to the newspaper, “Le Monde,” Lammerding lives peacefully in Dusseldorf as a director of a building materials firm. Because of a German law which forbids prosecution in West Germany of war criminals sentenced for crimes in foreign countries, Lammerding has been left alone. Ger-man-French bilateral agreements do not provide for a situation under which he could be extradicted. His case received new attention in the press in France while it was also carrying extensive reports on the socalled massacre of Vietnamese by United States soldiers at My Lai. Mr Lipkowskl told the Assembly that negotiations were going on between the French and Germans on a protocol

which would permit Lammerding’s prosecution. But the tone of his statement caused surprise. Mr Lipkowski is often regarded as a man used by the Government when it wants to get something off its chest or

to-prepare ground for a shift in policy emphasis. His statements may have reflected growing official concern about West Germany’s power in Europe until now expressed only in private, and with irony.