Sacked general restored to N.A.T.O. post

Press, 3 February 1984, Page 6

Sacked general restored to N.A.T.O. post

NZPA-Reuter Bonn The West German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, has reinstated the sacked N.A.T.O. general, Guenther Kiessling, and defended his much-criticised Defence Minister in a bid to defuse a scandal that has shaken the Government. Dr Kohl told a news conference in Bonn yesterday that accusations by military Intelligence that General Kiessling had frequented homosexual bars, and thus risked blackmail, had proved unfounded. The general’s honour had had to be restored, he said.

General Kiessling, one of two deputies to the N.A.T.O. Supreme Commander in Europe, General Bernard Rogers, was West Germany’s top general in the alliance until his sudden dismissal in December. He swore on oath that he was not a homosexual.

After his sacking people who had asserted to have seen him regularly in a homosexual bar began publicly to express doubts about the sighting. The Minister, Mr Manfred Woerner, conceded on television that he had made mistakes in the Kiessling affair. But Dr Kohl rejected Opposition Social Democrat calls for his dismissal.

“Woerner offered me his resignation (on Monday) and I refused it for good reasons ... He is an outstanding Minister and an uncommonly well-informed and dedicated man,” Dr Kohl said.

General Kiessling was officially reappointed to his post by the West German President, Dr Karl Carstens, on Mr Woerner’s recommendation and is expected to retire formally with, full honours next month.

General Kiessling said that his health would not allow him to reassume the post.

“I consider it unthinkable that a general who has had to live through such weeks as these can fulfil his duties

... with the necessary inner energy,” General Kiessling said in a letter to Mr Woerner.

Mr Woerner said recently that General Kiessling had not got on well with General Rogers but that had not been a main reason for his dismissal.

The Opposition Social

Democrats said that the issue had called into question Dr Kohl’s leadership qualities. “We are being mocked abroad as a republic of clowns,” they said.

Dr Kohl had kept Mr Woerner only because he feared an attempt by the Right-wing Christian Social Union to increase its influence in the Centre-Right Cabinet, they said. Many commentators believed that the Bavarianbased Social Union’s leader, Franz Josef Strauss, had sought to use the crisis over General Kiessling to claim a Ministerial post for himself in Bonn.

Dr Kohl said yesterday that he had made his decision alone, “after careful study of relevant documents.”