November 5, 2003	Wednesday	Ramazan 9, 1424

BERLIN, Nov 4: The head of the German military’s special forces was sacked on Tuesday after backing a conservative politician under fire for comments widely criticised as anti-Semitic.

Defence Minister Peter Struck, announcing the dismissal, described General Reinhard Guenzel as a “lone, confused general” and said he was being stripped of his post with immediate effect.

It followed the leak of a letter in which Guenzel praised Martin Hohmann, a Christian Democratic Union (CDU) lawmaker who said Jews could be branded as a “race of perpetrators” for alleged crimes against civilians during the Russian revolution of 1917.

At a hastily-arranged news conference, a clearly angry Struck said Guenzel had damaged the image of the army with his “abstruse and confused” views.

“I don’t think that you can call it an honorary dismissal when the minister throws him out,” he said in reply to a question.

Struck said he was convinced Guenzel was an isolated case.

The 59-year-old general has been heading the KSK, the elite unit which has recently been active in Afghanistan.

The CDU leadership has already formally admonished Hohmann and removed him from a key parliamentary committee.

According to ZDF public television, Guenzel praised the Bundestag deputy for “an excellent speech ... of the kind only seldom read or heard in this nation with such courage for truth and clarity.”

He went on to assure Hohmann that “with your words, you are speaking for the soul of the majority of our people.”

Hohmann’s comments came in a speech to constituents early last month which only recently came to public attention.

In it, the politician likened what he claimed was bloodshed orchestrated by Jews during the Russian revolution to the murder of Jews in the Holocaust.

“Jews were active in great numbers in the leadership (of the Bolsheviks) as well as in the Cheka (Soviet secret police) firing squads,” Hohmann, 55, said according to a transcript placed on a CDU website but later removed.

“Thus one could describe Jews with some justification as a Taetervolk (race of perpetrators).

“That may sound horrible. But it would follow the same logic with which one describes the Germans as a race of perpetrators.”

Hohmann later said his words had been taken out of context and that he had not meant to deny the unique character of the Holocaust or describe Jews as a race of perpetrators.

Nevertheless, Germany’s Central Council of Jews said it planned to lodge a complaint with police and along with the Greens, junior partner in the ruling coalition, has called for his expulsion from the CDU.—AFP