Posted on 02/12/2003 3:24:47 PM PST by demlosers
Edited on 04/29/2004 2:02:05 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
BERLIN, Germany -- German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has said that neither his testimony in a kidnap trial nor his radical past should affect his current standing.
He was speaking outside a Frankfurt court on Tuesday after giving evidence in the trial of former fellow radical, 52-year-old Hans-Joachim Klein.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Fischer has admitted battling police in the 1970s
January 9, 2001
Web posted at: 10:32 AM EST (1532 GMT)
BERLIN, Germany -- Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has arranged a meeting with the policeman he is accused of beating 28 years ago when he was a radical left-winger.
He has spoken by telephone with Rainer Marx the policeman who was beaten during a 1970s protest. The conversation took place in a "friendly atmosphere," Foreign Ministry spokesman Andreas Michaelis said on Tuesday.
Marx said last week he couldn't definitely say that Fischer was among those who beat him at a violent 1973 demonstration in Frankfurt. But he said he held nothing against the foreign minister, but nonetheless would welcome a personal apology.
Fischer has acknowledged that he made a mistake when he used violence to advocate his leftist views, a part of his past he has never tried to conceal even as he rose through the ranks of the Greens party and eventually to the Foreign Ministry.
Fischer's past has re-emerged as an issue ahead of his scheduled testimony at a trial of a former fellow radical charged with murder in a 1975 attack on an OPEC ministers' meeting. Fischer, who has said he urged his friend not to resort to terrorism, is being called as a character witness.
Stern magazine last week published photographs it said showed a helmeted Fischer beating a policeman at the protest.
Under fire for his past as a left-wing radical, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer on Friday denied kicking and beating the police officer during the demonstration.
Opposition conservatives have called for Fischer's resignation after the Stern article appeared.
Stern said one image showed Fischer, wearing a helmet, beating the officer; another seems to show him raising his foot as the officer falls down to the ground.
Fischer, who is also Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's deputy, has apologised for assaulting the officer. But in an interview on Friday in the Tagesspiegel newspaper, he insisted he had never beaten or kicked any police officer lying on the ground.
Asked whether there could be such photos of him, Fischer said: "No. But pictures could turn up where Joschka Fischer lies on the floor and is beaten up by four policemen. I can show you those."
Fischer, 52, has admitted throwing stones and battling with police in the 1970s, but insists he realised that using violence was a "big mistake" when some fellow radicals drifted into terrorism.
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