Sir Elwyn Jones, the British Attorney General, and one of the prosecutors of the Allied War Crimes Trials at Nuremberg, is examining the West German Statute of Limitations at Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s request, sources close to the Government reported here today.
The Prime Minister made the request in connection with his forthcoming visit to Bonn when he expected to take up the issue, along with a number of other problems, in his talks with Chancellor Ludwig Erhard and other West German Government leaders. The Erhard Government has been under widespread and intense criticism from a wide range of critics for its refusal to consider extending the deadline for prosecution of Nazi war criminals beyond next May 8 when the statute of limitations for prosecution of murder takes effect.
One of the reasons for Prime Minister Wilson’s interest in the matter is that Britain is one of the former occupation powers in Germany which helped pave the way for a democratic-government in West Germany. Another is that there is an ideological tic between Wilson’s Labor party and West Germany’s Social Democratic party which insists on abolition of the statute of limitations for war criminals.
It was pointed out that there is no pressure on the Prime Minister to bring the matter up in Bonn because the attitude of the British Government is well known. Sources close to the British Foreign Office said there was an impression here that a hardening of the West German attitude on compensation for victims of the Nazi regime and also in regard to Israel generally was a feature of West Germany’s foreign policy under Chancellor Erhard. This, it was said, plus the “stubborn resistance” to changing the statute of limitations, represented a departure from the attitude of the government of former Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.
It was noted that the issue of the statute of limitations was one of the main differences between the Social Democrats and the ruling Christian Democrats. The Christian Democrats them selves were reported split on the issue but a majority opposes abolition of the statute and support the Government’s position in which, it was also noted, it has some embarrassing allies, such as the neo-Nazis and extremist nationalists in West Germany.
(The American Section of the world executive of Agudas Israel today adopted a strong protest against the application of the statute of limitations in Germany with regard to crimes committed by the Nazis against Jews. The Agudist world-executive expects the German Government “to revoke the statute of limitations with regard to these crimes which have no precedent and no parallel in history of mankind,” the resolution said.)
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