Dr. Eugen Gerstenmair, president of the West German Bundestag, said today, on a radio interview here prior to his leaving for an eight-day visit to Israel, that not even West Germany’s current coalition crisis was considered sufficient reason to postpone the visit.
The West German official will meet with President Ben-Zvi, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and other leading Israelis. He will lecture at Hebrew University on “Have the Germans Changed?–Facts, Aims and Dangers.”
During the interview, at the airport, he disclosed that a West German Parliamentary Commission had examined the question of whether the present tense political situation permitted the Bundestag president to leave West Germany and decided in the affirmative.
Asked about West German-Israeli diplomatic relations, Dr. Gersteinmair said he would study that matter while he was in Israel even though it was not his business to negotiate on the problem.
Dr. Gersteinmair is going to Israel at the invitation of the Israel Mission in Cologne. Because there are no diplomatic relations between Israel and west Germany, a reception for him by Knesset Speaker Kaddish Luz is not anticipated.
(In Israel, a number of former underground fighters organizations, Nazi victims and the rightist movement, Betar, disclosed today they planned demonstrations during the visit of Dr. Gerstenmair. The target of the demonstrations is the West German experts working, with the knowledge of West German authorities, in supplying Egypt with missiles, Banners were prepared with such slogans as “Return German Missile Experts from Egypt.”)
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