— Jewish students and other supporters of Israel demonstrated here last Friday to protest West Germany’s plans to sell sophisticated arms to Saudi Arabia. The demonstration, which was without incident but attracted considerable television and news media coverage, coincided with the visit of British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington.
He met separately in Hamburg and in Bonn Friday with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. The proposed sale of Tornado combat aircraft built by an Anglo-German-Italian consortium to Saudi Arabia reportedly was a topic of their conversations.
The demonstrators carried placards reading “Leopard II Equals Holocaust II”, a reference to West Germany’s new Leopard II tanks, one of the modern weapons systems the government plans to sell to the Saudis. The demonstration was the first over the projected arms deal and its organizers said they elicited a positive response from the public.
Carrington, meanwhile, was reported to have briefed his hosts on his recent visit to Saudi Arabia. Schmidt is due to leave for Saudi Arabia on his own visit tomorrow. They also discussed the European Economic Community’s Middle East initiative which is expected to be advanced after Britain assumes the rotating chairmanship of the European institutions on July I.
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