Fischer faces perjury inquiry

Fischer faces allegations that he lied during the trial of convicted murderer Hans-Joachim Klein

FRANKFURT, Germany -- German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer could face court action over allegations that he committed perjury.

German prosecutors said they had applied to parliament on Friday to open a formal investigation into the claims arising from a high-profile criminal case.

Fischer appeared as a character witness at the trial of Hans-Joachim Klein, who was involved in the attack on an OPEC oil ministers' meeting in Vienna in 1974.

Klein was jailed for nine years on Thursday after he was convicted on three murder and three attempted murder charges.

"A letter to (lower house speaker Wolfgang) Thierse is on its way," said a source at the regional justice department.

A spokesman for the foreign minister said he would welcome an investigation as a way to clear his name. "We want a preliminary investigation," Andreas Michaelis said. "We view this prospect with great calm."

Fischer, a leading Green and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's deputy in the centre-left coalition government, testified he knew Klein during the 1970s, when he had taken part in street protests, but had been unable to turn Klein away from armed violence.

He denied in court that he had lived with members of the Red Army Faction guerrilla group, but later acknowledged that RAF member Margrit Schiller may have stayed briefly in the same building in Frankfurt in the 1970s and he might have met her. But he continued to deny ever personally helping her.

Street battle

As a government minister, Fischer, 52, has immunity from prosecution and the Bundestag would have to grant its approval for any legal investigation to begin.

Further permission would be required for any prosecuton to start. Perjury carries a jail term of up to five years in Germany.

The development comes weeks after Fischer faced questions over allegations he struck a policeman during his radical youth.

He faced calls to quit after a newspaper published a photograph that appeared to show him clashing with a policeman during a street battle in Frankfurt in 1973.

Fischer said the brawl took place as police tried to clear squatters from an abandoned house, and that it was the first time he had not run from them.

"I was terribly afraid," Fischer said in an interview with Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "For the first time I saw fear in the eyes of a cop."

Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democrats (CDU), said: "(Chancellor Gerhard) Schroeder has called for decent people to rise up against far-right violence, but he has a vice-chancellor who beat up police officers," Merkel said. "It doesn't fit."

Roland Koch, conservative premier of Hesse state, where the violence took place, said: "Fischer tries to avoid this unpleasant page in his past by saying he can't remember," he said. "Intentionally kicking an officer on the ground shows an attitude you can't gloss over."

Reuters contributed to this report.

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German Federal Government

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