Germany pledges more cash to fight extreme right

BERLIN (Reuters) -- The German government agreed on Wednesday to plow more money into the fight against right-wing extremism after a new string of incidents raised broad concern about neo-Nazism and racist hate crime.

The lingering fascination of a tiny minority of Germans with their Nazi past came to the fore as hundreds of posters honoring Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess appeared overnight in east Germany on the eve of the 13th anniversary of his death.

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Highlighting fears that the issue could damage Germany's image abroad, Israeli President Moshe Katzav said Germans had a "special responsibility" to counter far-right attitudes.

Most analysts say such sentiment is no more prevalent in Germany than across much of Europe but agree Germans have a heightened responsibility to counter it given their grim past.

A government spokesman said Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's cabinet agreed at a meeting to channel an extra $16 million a year into educational projects, crime prevention and a fund for victims of racist attacks.

The cash, on top of the annual $200 million already spent in the area including projects to integrate immigrants, is also to be used to root out Internet websites with far-right and neo-Nazi content and, where possible, to seek to ban them.

Demonstrations banned

A bomb at a railway station in Duesseldorf last month wounded 10 former Soviet immigrants, including six Jews, and it provoked a national debate about racist violence -- although the culprits and their motives remain a mystery.

The bombing followed a spate of reports of racist attacks in the economically depressed east, where relatively few of Germany's seven million foreigners live.

More than 30 murders have been classed as racist in the decade since the Berlin Wall fell. However, hard evidence of any significant increase in hate crime is scant and some commentators have suggested the issue is being used by the media to fill a summer lull in news.

Police in eastern Germany's main Baltic port, Rostock, said around 250 posters and leaflets honoring Hess were spotted in towns along the coast.

Police said the campaign was probably the work of neo-Nazis who insist that Hess, found hanged in Berlin's Spandau prison in 1987, did not commit suicide as generally thought but was killed by his British captors.

One leaflet read: "Wanted: the legalized murderers of the Soviet Union, England, France and the United States for murder. Scene of the crime: Berlin-Spandau. Victim: Rudolf Hess, 93 years old, wrongly imprisoned for 46 years."

As in previous years, authorities have banned demonstrations by neo-Nazis this weekend to commemorate the death of Hess, who fell into Allied hands in 1941 after parachuting into Scotland in an apparent bid to broker peace with Britain.

Israel's Katzav, in an interview to be published in Thursday's Bild newspaper, said Germany's past made the fight against the far right all the more critical.

"I welcomed the reunification of Germany. I wish Germany would show understanding for the things that we care about," he said. "Germany is a developed country and has a duty to fight against neo-Nazi tendencies with all its might."

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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