Erich Ollenhauer, chairman of the Social Democratic party of West Germany, will fly to Israel Monday at the invitation of Mapai, the first issued to the West German party chief by an Israeli political group. Interest in his visit to Israel will be heightened by the possibility that he may succeed Konrad Adenauer as West German Chancellor after the Bundestag elections in September.
Mr. Ollenhauer will be accompanied by Heinz Putzrath, head of the foreign affairs section of the Social Democratic party executive, which accepted the invitation last week. The German political leader had originally been scheduled to make the Israel visit as the last stop of his Asian tour last year. While that tour was in the planning stage. Mr. Ollenhauer rejected suggestions from the Bonn Foreign Office that he should demonstrate his party’s impartiality by including in his itinerary one Arab League country.
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