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PRESS RELEASE


General Kujat for a Marshall Plan for Syria

WIESBADEN, July 30 (EIRNS)—The German Air Force website reported yesterday on a speech by Gen. Harald Kujat (ret.), former chief of the Bundeswehr General Staff (2000-02), and chairman of the NATO Military Committee (2002-05), several weeks ago to an audience of several hundred at the Non-Commissioned Officers School of the German Luftwaffe that called for a Marshall Plan for Syria. General Kujat said:

"It’s necessary to stabilize the country, establish a transitional government with free elections, and support democracy and reconstruction, similar to the Marshall Plan in the former post-war Germany."

General Kujat and another speaker Wolfgang Kubicki, deputy head of the Free Democratic Party, both answered a question on the danger of war in Europe that "nobody wanted one." General Kujat then added: "But an inadvertent action could escalate and then cause a war," and that for centuries conflicts have started in this way. The report continues, paraphrasing him, that

"The NATO maneuvers taking place on Russia’s western borders don’t contribute to easing tensions, and they brand Russia as an opponent. Kubicki spoke of an inappropriate ’Kettenrasseln’" which is undermining the efforts for a common security policy with Russia that was begun in the 1990s. Kubicki paralleled German Foreign Minister Steinmeier’s earlier attack on "NATO saber rattling."

Both speakers also rejected using the Bundeswehr within Germany against the terrorist threat, pointing to the need to expand police capabilities. They uphold the German Constitution’s clarity on the division of powers, which shouldn’t be undermined.

General Kujat is well-known for being rigorous that the Bundestag is the branch that authorizes foreign military deployments. The use of NATO AWACS planes, partially staffed by German troops, for use in Syria where the potential for incidents with the Russian Aerospace Forces could take place, is such a case in point. Former State Secretary to the Defense Ministry and former OSCE Vice President Willy Wimmer yesterday told Sputnik Deutschland that a U.S. NATO AWACS and a Saudi AWACS plane might have been involved in the Turkish Air Force shooting down a Russian Su-24 bomber in November 2015. The agency’s English service Sputnik International reported Wimmer’s remarks today.

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