13 December 2006
At the start of his first-ever visit to Germany as Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert has paid homage to Jews deported to the death camps during World War II. Olmert laid a wreath at the Platform 17 memorial erected by Germany's national railway service Deutsche Bahn at the former goods station Berlin Grunewald. In a brief address, the Israeli premier said that the six million Jews murdered under Hitler would have wanted "everything possible to be done to ensure the State of Israel is the exact opposite of Nazi evil." Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, referred to the "so-called Holocaust conference" currently taking place in the Iranian capital, Tehran. "At this moment a band of criminals is sitting down together, denying the Shoa, soiling the memories of the victims, preaching the destruction of the State of Israel and planning other treacherous, evil deeds," she said. Some 50,000 Berlin Jews were deported from the station between 1941 and 1945, first to ghettoes and later to concentration and extermination camps. Following the ceremony, Olmert met Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel for talks that focused on the Middle East and Iran's nuclear program.
The Israeli leader came under fire yesterday for comments made in an interview with German television regarding nuclear capabilities. "We never threatened any nation with annihilation," Olmert, speaking in English, told "N24 Sat1" television. "Iran openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as France, America, Russia and Israel?" Olmert's spokeswoman was quick to deny that the PM had admitted to Israel having nuclear weapons, saying that "Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons to the region." However, Likud opposition politicians called for Olmert to resign. Israel has long declined to confirm or deny having the atomic bomb as part of a "strategic ambiguity" policy that it says fends off numerically superior Arab enemies.
Deputy prime minister Shimon Peres, considered by some as the father of Israel's unconfirmed nuclear program, told Israel's "Army Radio": "The fact that some fear that we have the nuclear option is enough dissuasion." Peres added that "During a meeting in Washington [in 1963] I told [then US president] Kennedy that Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons to the region." In a documentary aired on Israeli television in 2001, Peres said that France had agreed in 1956 to provide Israel with "a nuclear capacity" as part of secret negotiations ahead of the invasion of Egypt known as the Suez crisis.
