Word: bonneli
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Kohl's sudden turnabout last week touched off a rash of inquiries in West Germany to establish who knew what and when. On Friday government spokesman Friedhelm Ost said the country's intelligence agency had given Bonn in mid- October "serious information" about Imhausen's possible role in the Libyan project. Whether or not Kohl received those details, he was definitely informed about the U.S. case against Imhausen when he visited Washington in mid-November. Says Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charles Thomas: "When Kohl left here, he was absolutely convinced." A Kohl adviser was not quite as sweeping...
...West German Finance Ministry did not even begin an audit of Imhausen until the U.S. stepped up its pressure on Bonn around Christmas. The delay occurred, says Ost, because "some things have to be pursued in a discreet manner." Discretion, however, quickly gave way to finger pointing. Press reports obviously based on leaks from U.S. officials began appearing on New Year's Day. The next day, through a spokesman, Bonn issued the first of several denials, claiming that "we have no evidence so far that German firms or persons have been involved" in the Libyan project...
West German officials may have dug in their heels in part because of what they called "a media campaign" in the U.S. Bonn took special umbrage at a New York Times column by William Safire calling the desert chemical plant "Auschwitz-in-the-sand...
...intelligence briefing in Washington. Perhaps seizing on that proposal as a diplomatic way to take a new tack, Genscher agreed not only to send such a delegation but also to tighten West Germany's notoriously loose regulations governing the export of potentially dangerous products, including chemicals. Two days later Bonn announced plans to increase the number of customer nations whose purchases are monitored and to impose more stringent reporting requirements for exporting firms...
...Bonn's denials also began to erode in the face of a series of embarrassing disclosures in the West German press. The most detailed appeared last Thursday in the weekly Stern, which traced the Libyan project to I.B.I. Engineering, a now defunct firm. I.B.I. had set up an office in Frankfurt through which the firm's chief, an exiled Iraqi arms merchant named Ihsan Barbouti, 64, orchestrated the involvement of Imhausen and as many as 30 other firms and individuals from West Germany, Switzerland and Austria. At least some of the equipment shipped to Libya was ostensibly purchased by I.B.I...