Yankee Bombs Go Home: Foreign Minister Wants US Nukes out of Germany

[bigtree]

04/10/2009

Reacting to Obama's vision of a nuclear-free world, German Foreign Minister Steinmeier has called for American nuclear weapons to be removed from Germany. His stance is in opposition to Chancellor Merkel, who wants to keep the bombs to secure Germany's say in NATO.

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." Disarmament involving "weapons in this category" also needs to be an issue on the agenda at the disarmament conference which the US is planning, Steinmeier said.

After German reunification in 1990, however, the US withdrew almost all its warheads from Europe. Nowadays US bombs are still stored in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey, as well as Germany, where they are kept in a Bundeswehr air base in Büchel in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Altogether around 100 American nukes are stored in Europe. However a commission of experts told US Defense Secretary Robert Gates last December that the warheads have "no military value" and that storing them safely consumes "enormous sums of money."

read more: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,618550,00.html

[jeff30997]

1. "These weapons are militarily obsolete today,"

Hey Chancellor Merkel,you should also keep a big stockpile of those,just in case:

[Karenina]

2. OOO-la-la!

:bounce: