Allon Begins Three-day Official Visit to West Germany

Israeli Foreign Minister Yigal Allon began a three-day official visit to West Germany today with a stop-over at the site of the notorious Dachau concentration camp near Munich. But his brief pause there to pay respects to the victims of the Holocaust will not set the tone of his talks with West Germany’s leaders, diplomatic circles here said. These circles maintain that Israelis and Germans are no longer “prisoners of the past,” that their relations are “more adult and pragmatic” and “oriented to the future.”

A government spokesman observed today that while the past can never be forgotten, its bitter memories have receded into the sub-conscious and relations between Israel and West Germany are characterized now by mutual respect and responsibility rather than emotionalism.

There is no firm agenda for Allon’s talks with Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. The two are expected to discuss the Middle East crisis, the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean generally, the Cyprus crisis, the European Economic Community and East-West detente, a development to which both countries are vulnerable and have a vested interest.

EURO-ARAB DIALOGUE A MAJOR TOPIC

Another major topic is expected to be the projected European-Arab dialogue which, if successful, can have a long-term stabilizing influence on the Middle East, the West Germans believe. The Bonn government has assured Israel that any attempt by the Arabs to use the dialogue for political purposes would be stopped abruptly. Israel is being briefed on every stage of the dialogue which Jerusalem has accepted as reasonable.

Allon will also meet with Finance Minister Hans Apel and Economic Cooperation Minister Egon Bahr. He has a meeting scheduled with President Walter Scheel, but a meeting with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt is uncertain because the latter is ill with pleurisy.

Allon’s visit is the first here by an Israeli Foreign Minister since his predecessor, Abba Eban, came to Bonn in 1970. It comes on the tenth anniversary of the establishment of full diplomatic relations between West Germany and Israel and will take place against the background of successfully developing political, economic and cultural relations between the two countries.

MUTUAL INTERESTS ASSESSED

West Germany is now Israel’s third most important trading partner–after the U.S. and Britain–and officials here believe that the trade relationship is firmly based on a “solid foundation of mutual interest,” Israel, of course, has a severe deficit in its trade with West Germany. It exported DM 400 million to this country in 1974 against imports of DM 1.2 billion. But officials believe that the new preferential trade treaty that Israel will sign soon with the European Common Market will even out the imbalances.

They note that West Germany has been a firm supporter of the treaty from the start and opposed the idea of reciprocal Israeli tariff preferences for EEC goods. The reason for the huge West German trade surplus with Israel lies in the structure of the trade between the two countries that reflects Israel’s urgent need for investment goods, raw materials, semi-finished products and food, Bonn circles say.

Diplomatic sources pointed out that private German investments in Israel amounted to DM 400 million in 1974, an 18-fold increase since 1970. They went mainly into Israeli hotels and other tourist facilities, Cultural relations have also expanded between the two countries, highlighted by youth exchange visits which the Germans say will have a “profound and long-term influence on relations.” There has also been a growth of scientific and technological cooperation, marked by the successful, though controversial “German Week” in Tel Aviv in 1971.