An opposition member of the Bundestag warned today that the opening of a Palestine Liberation Organization office in East Berlin would create a perfect base for Arab hijackers and assassins and urged Four Power efforts to prevent it.
Friedrich Zimmerman, of the Christian Socialist Union (CSU), called on the West German government to ask the three Western powers in Berlin–U.S., Britain and France–to intercede with the Soviet Union to put pressure on East Germany to ban the PLO office. The official East German Communist Party newspaper, “Neues Deutschland,” reported on Aug. 6 that an agreement had been signed between the party’s Politburo and Yassir Arafat, PLO leader, to open the office. No date was announced.
Zimmerman said the presence of a PLO office in East Berlin would be a contravention of the Four Power agreement on Berlin to keep the city free of tensions and international conflicts. He said such an office would endanger the security of West Berlin because it is no longer difficult to travel between East and West.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
