Bonn Urged to Wage Relentless War Against Terrorism

A leading member of the Christian Democratic Union-Christian Socialist Union opposition in West Germany, Alfred Dregger, who is chairman of the Hesse CDU, has called on the Bonn government “to wage relent less war on international terrorism.” Dregger said the fight against terrorism could only succeed if all states proved their determination to pursue acts of violence independent of political opportunism. He said he fully-supported the Japanese government’s demand on Libya for the extradition of the terrorists who hijacked the Japan Air Line jumbo jet.

Dregger also demanded that the West German government should go back on their decision not to ask, for legal and political reasons, for the extradition from Libya of the three surviving Arab assassins responsible for the Munich Olympic massacre last Sept. He said this decision made “a sheer mockery of the system of international law.”

It was recently revealed that the Bonn government had refrained from making an extradition request to the Libyan government. In Nov., 1972, the West German authorities released the three surviving terrorists without a struggle when Arab hijackers sought to obtain their release by threatening to blow up a Lufthansa Airliner at Zagreb, Yugoslavia.

The Foreign Office said in response to Dregger’s demand that the Bonn government would not revise its decision not to ask for the extradition of the three surviving Munich assassins from Libya, and that no one could be sure, in any case, whether they were still in Libya.

On Libya’s apparent decision to bring the hijackers of the JAL to court, the Foreign Office spokesman said it was not for the West German government to welcome or in any way comment on the internal actions of another state. An opposition MP noted that the Bonn government had been only too ready to “express regret” or “condemn” other acts of violence in the past, including those perpetrated by Israel.