Schroeder backs sale of nuke reprocessor to Russia

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Schroeder backs sale of nuke reprocessor to Russia
  
BERLIN, Aug 28 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroederon 
Monday rejected criticism from his coalition over the planned sale of 
a plutonium reprocessing plant to Russia by electronics and 
engineering group Siemens AG. 

``There are no security or foreign policy reasons against it,'' 
Schroeder told journalists in Berlin before a party meeting. ``There 
is global interest in making weapons-grade plutonium less dangerous 
through reprocessing.'' 

Members of the environmentalist Greens, junior coalition partners to 
Schroeder's ruling Social Democrats, have spoken out against trade in 
nuclear technology and said Germany should not allow such a sale 
especially after the country pledged earlier this year to phase out 
nuclear power. 

Schroeder also declared a separate dispute with some Greens over the 
export of an ammunition factory to Turkey as ended. 

``There is nothing to solve. The case is decided,'' he said. 

Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, the most prominent Green in the 
cabinet, last week indirectly defended the granting of export 
approval for an ammunition plant destined for Turkey and called for 
calm from critics of the deal from within his party. 

The approval of the sale of German tanks to Turkey and the United 
Arab Emirates earlier this year prompted a near-crisis in the Greens' 
coalition with the SPD. 

Fischer had insisted that an order from Ankara for battle tanks 
should only win an export licence if Turkey showed progress on human 
and minority rights, but he was outvoted in the cabinet committee 
which must approve such deals. 

Fischer is the most influential figure among the Greens but has 
little formal power in the party's diffuse leadership structure. He 
has faced criticism from the ecologist party's vocal 
``fundamentalist'' wing over the compromises he has made since 
joining the government two years ago. 

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