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Criticism of Western sanctions against Russia grows in SPD: report

Xinhua,March 29, 2018 Adjust font size:

BERLIN, March 29 (Xinhua) -- There is growing criticism of Western sanctions against Russia in the German Social Democrat Party (SPD), the newspaper "Sueddeutsche Zeitung" reported on Thursday.

Speaking to "Sueddeutsche Zeitung", deputy SPD leader Ralf Stegner said that the expulsion of diplomats was not the "pinnacle of wisdom." Instead the move would set off a cycle of escalation which could come back to "harm us very much", according to Stegner.

The SPD politician called on the British government to "finally present concrete evidence for Russia's responsibility" in the Skripal case. He emphasized that "appearance and plausibility" alone did not suffice to reach a judgement.

Stegner argued that the expulsion of diplomats was not a "substitute for politics". Governments were better advised to focus their energy on investigating the case at hand thoroughly and preserving an open dialogue with Moscow.

The SPD deputy party leader is only the latest of several senior SPD politicians, including the former European Union (EU) Commission president Guenter Verheugen, who have expressed their discomfort over Berlin's decision to support an unprecedented coordinated move to expulse Russian diplomats from dozens of Western countries.

Verheugen has vocally warned against reaching a premature conclusion that Russia is to blame for the poisoning of the ex-spy Sergei Skripal. Speaking to "ZDF", the ex-Commission president highlighted the example of the Iraq war, when the U.S. and Britain "lied to the entire world" over the purported existence of weapons of mass destructions in the country to justify its invasion.

Similarly, former SPD leader Matthais Platzeck urged Berlin to draw lessons from the 2003 Iraq war by refusing to be dragged by Washington and London into an international conflict. At the time, ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (SPD) decided not to participate in the George W. Bush's "coalition of the willing", a move which reportedly earned him widespread respect in the SPD and among the German public in general. Enditem

 

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