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Schroeder: nuke sale to China only with guarantees

IRNA

Berlin, Dec 5, IRNA -- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Friday 
affirmed that a prerequisite for the sale of a controversial nuclear 
facility to China would be to ensure that it isn`t abused for military
purposes. 
"Such a guarantee will be provided," Schroeder said early Friday 
cited by DPA, brushing off concerns voiced by top German MPs from 
the junior coalition partner of the ruling Social Democrats, the 
Greens party. 
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said that although 
his personal political conviction did not allow him to think much of 
the possible deal with China, "bitter decisions" have to be made 
sometimes. 
He did however add that a permit for the sale of the shut-down 
Hanauer nuclear facility near Frankfurt would require "ruling out 
that the facility be used for military purposes or the distribution 
of weapons of mass destruction," the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 
reported. 
Schroeder on Tuesday, during his trip to China, hinted at the 
possible sale of the nuclear facility, while a government spokesman 
in Berlin affirmed that Germany`s Siemens company had filed a 
"formal request" for its sale. 
The news sparked widespread outrage among politicians, notably 
among the Greens party whose condition for forming a coalition with 
Schroeder`s Social Democrats was a withdrawal from atomic energy. 
"It is contradictory to decide for Germany to quit nuclear 
power, and on the other hand, to export a (nuclear) plant -- which, by
the way, is able to produce weapons-grade plutonium," Greens party 
leader Angelika Beer said earlier in the week. 
VKP/214 
End