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German defense minister cancels U.S. trip

Xinhua, May 2, 2017 Adjust font size:

German Minister of Defense Ursula von der Leyen has canceled her trip to the United States, so as to investigate the recent event surrounding a soldier on suspicion of terrorism, a ministry spokesperson said Tuesday.

The minister will go to Illkirch to investigate the recent events surrounding the soldier Franco A. The priority will be solving the current events, according to the ministry.

A panel consisting of 100 high-ranking army executives will be held in Berlin on Thursday to discuss the ways to solve "the accumulated cases."

Von der Leyen has sparked a wave of indignation from political opposition and the German Armed Forces Association with her open letter to members of the German army. She criticizes an "obvious weakness in leadership at different levels."

Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces Hans-Peter Bartels on Tuesday pointed out the responsibility of the minister.

"Now that Mrs. von der Leyen says there is a problem with leadership, one obviously has to say: leadership starts at the top," Bartels said on German radio.

In the past three and a half years, the minister missed the opportunity to set a course to end problems, according to Bartels.

Von der Leyen has been defense minister and commander-in-chief of the armed forces since 2013.

"The German army has an attitude problem," von der Leyen told public television channel ZDF on Sunday. The criticism was a reaction to the case of German soldier Franco A., who allegedly planned a state-threatening act of violence motivated by right-wing extremism, as well as a series of abuse cases in the German army's training units.

It could not be considered as an isolated case anymore, according to von der Leyen.

"This is incredible," Head of the German Armed Forces Association Andre Wuestner responded, "no one can comprehend how a minister retreats to the stands and judges her own team."

According to Wuestner, the minister accepts further damage to the relation between politics and army without specifying which facts she criticizes.

SPD spokesperson for defense policy Rainer Arnold also demanded an apology from the minister.

This blanket insinuation of an attitude problem is "an insult to every righteous soldier," Arnold told the Passauer Neue Presse.

There is a structural problem concerning information policy and the investigations of right-wing events within the German army that "should long have been combated by the minister," Arnold said, according to his party. Endit