The Interior Ministry announced Monday it is considering a ban on neo-Nazi groups that recruit young right-wing extremists to fight on the side of Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf war.
The ministry received a strong protest from the Jewish community last week after a state-owned television channel aired a program which contained scenes of neo-Nazi recruits getting paramilitary training in a wooded area near Frankfurt.
Trainees who were interviewed called the war against Iraq a “Zionist, imperialist plot.”
The Interior Ministry said it would keep the training activities under close surveillance.
Meanwhile, Franz Schoenhuber, the former SS officer who heads the extreme right-wing Republican Party, criticized Germany’s participation in the Gulf war on the side of the U.S.-led coalition. Europe’s interests in the region differ from America’s, he said.
Schoenbuber was re-elected party leader in Augsburg on Sunday, putting him in a stronger position to deal with internal opposition, which managed to oust him briefly last year.
The Munich-based Republican Party, which seemed for a while to pose a serious political threat to the established conservative parties, now has little more than 20,000 members, a decline Schoenhuber promises to reverse.
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