The newly elected President of the 35th session of the General Assembly, Ambassador Rudiger von Wechmar of West Germany, expressed the hope in his address last night that the Assembly will be able to contribute to “a just, secure and lasting peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors, including the Palestinians.”
Von Wechmar, a 57-year-old former journalist, was elected by acclamation. His election marks the first time a German has been chosen for the prestigious post, and, in the view of diplomats and observers here, a further step in the acceptance of Germany to the international community after the atrocities of World War II. Von Wechmar succeeds Salim Ahmed Salim of Tanzania as President of the154-nation Assembly.
During World War II van Wechmar served under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in the Afrika Korps. He later was captured by the U.S. army and was a prisoner of war in Colorado and Virginia.
In response to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency question regarding von Wechmar’s service in the army of Nazi Germany, a spokeswoman for the West German UN Mission here said the Ambassador’s only response was to point out that for five years — from 1969 to 1974 — he was one of Chancellor Willy Brandt’s closest aides and his spokesman. Brandt, a leader of the Socialist International, has been a relentless fighter against Nazism and neo-Nazism.
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