BERLIN, June 23: German opposition politicians have demanded that US nuclear bombs be removed from the country after a US Air Force report cast doubt over the safety of the weapons, a press report said on Monday.

“The nuclear weapons are a hangover from the Cold War and must go,” Guido Westerwelle, the head of the liberal opposition Free Democrats, told the Berliner Zeitung daily.

“If there are any security risks, this is one more reason to remove all nuclear weapons that were kept in Germany for tactical reasons.” At the weekend, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) posted on the Internet an internal report by the US Air Force which found that most European air force bases that house US nuclear bombs are failing to meet safety requirements to protect the weapons.

Several hundred thermonuclear bombs are kept at air bases in six Nato countries, including Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

According to the report, the bases often fall short of US Defence Department standards, with fences, lighting and buildings in need of repair and security guards often lacking sufficient training and experience.

One of the leaders of Germany’s increasingly popular far-left opposition party, The Left, Gregor Gysi, said the report proved that “nuclear arms are never safe.” ”If the federal government had a backbone, it would immediately call on the United States to remove the nuclear weapons, even to scrap them.” But government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm told a press briefing on Monday that Berlin was for the time bound to Nato accords that agree to use nuclear arms as a military deterrent.

“For the foreseeable future ... we remain of the view that a deterring military capacity includes not only conventional capacity but also nuclear components,” Wilhelm said.

“Under an accord dating from 1999 that is still binding, the principle of nuclear weapons as a deterrent has been maintained.” Defence ministry spokesman Thomas Raabe declined to give any detail on the number or location of US nuclear bombs—AFP