By IRNA,
Berlin : A major German peace group on Saturday called for the closure of all US military bases in Germany and the removal of all American nuclear bombs.
Talking to IRNA, the spokesman of the Westpfalz Peace Initiative, Detlev Besier said, “It would be nice, if the bases close but we are aware that this won’t happen so soon. The long-term goal is not to have any military here. The co-existence of people must be ensured without the military.”
Based in southwestern Germany, Besier has actively coordinated rallies and protest at US bases in the towns of Landstuhl and Ramstein which is the largest American air base outside the US and has played a crucial logistic role during the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The peace activist stressed his organization’s pacifist vision of a world “without wars and military”.
There are currently 22 US military bases spread across Germany, hosting around 45,000 GIs.
A major concern of Germans are the existence of American nuclear weapons on their soil as Besier made clear that a “short-term” objective was the removal of all US atomic arms.
At least 20 US atomic warheads are reportedly still deployed underground at the German air base in the southwestern town of Buechel where they can be mounted on German Tornado fighter jets.
Around 350 American nuclear warheads remain still in Europe, according to various media reports.
Up to 130 additional warheads had been stored at Ramstein, but the weekly Der Spiegel news magazine reported earlier that the arsenal was cleared during renovation work in 2005, and it was likely they were never returned to Germany.
According to a list handed out to US weapons inspectors, the arms may have been removed.
“I think it is fairly certain that they are gone,” Hans M.
Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C., told the website of Der Spiegel.
“There are too many things which indicate that they are gone. This fits very nicely,” he added.
The Federation of American Scientists, or FAS, conducts regular inspections of US nuclear facilities.
It periodically receives a list from the Air Force of bases to be inspected, and the latest list — from January 2007 — failed to include Ramstein which was still mentioned in 2005.
The German base in Buechel, remains on the list, along with bases in Belgium, Italy, Turkey, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
Neither the German defense ministry nor the Pentagon will discuss the status of those atomic bombs.
The Pentagon, as a rule, never comments on “the number or position of the US military’s nuclear weapons.”
But Kristensen maintained the list counted as evidence.
“This means that the weapons are gone,” he said.
“They are not allowed to store weapons without this security process and no security process means they are gone … That is the best evidence you can get in this business,” Kristensen added.
During the Cold War the number of US warheads deployed in Europe was in the thousands as the highest estimated number topped about 7,000 in 1971.