Bonn Official Escapes Ambush Linked to IMF-World Bank Talks

BONN — A gunman opened fire Tuesday on a senior official of the West German Finance Ministry in what police said was an ambush attempt apparently related to a meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank that opens Thursday in West Berlin.

Hans Tietmeyer, a state secretary at the ministry, escaped unhurt in the incident, in which a police spokesman said three or four rounds from a shotgun were fired. Tietmeyer, 57, had been en route to Bonn from his home in suburban Bad Godesberg. Tietmeyer’s driver, who also was not hurt, reported the attack from a nearby police station.

“The government and I personally are deeply shaken,” Finance Minister Gerhard Stoltenberg said in a statement. “We must assume that this awful incident is connected to the forthcoming annual meeting of the World Bank and IMF in Berlin.”

Radical leftists and anarchists have threatened to disrupt the meeting to protest IMF and World Bank lending policies to Third World countries, which in their view tend to thrust poorer countries further into debt.

Beefed-Up Security

A number of threats have been received in connection with the Berlin meeting, and as a result, about 6,000 additional police officers from West Germany have been assigned to the former capital, where about 10,000 financial officials from 151 countries will be meeting for a week.

In Berlin, a spokesman for the left-wing group Alternative List condemned the attack, saying that “shootings are not acceptable in any circumstances.”

In 1986, Gerold von Brauenmuhl, political director of the Foreign Ministry, was shot to death by unidentified assassins near his home in Bonn in an attack attributed to terrorists. Since then, terrorism in West Germany has been largely limited to property. Authorities estimate that no more than a dozen hard-core terrorists are still at large, plus about 200 sympathizers.

Tuesday’s shooting also focused attention on a running controversy within the government over the possibility of a pardon for two imprisoned terrorists. Both are former members of the Baader-Meinhof gang, which was particularly active in the 1970s.

President Richard von Weizsaecker is reportedly studying a plea for clemency on behalf of the two, Peter Boock and Angelika Speitel, both 36.

They admitted to membership in the Baader-Meinhof gang, also known as the Red Army Faction, but denied any part in a series of killings attributed to the gang, including those of Juergen Ponto, chief of the Dresdner Bank, and Hanns-Martin Schleyer, head of the industrialists’ confederation.

Repudiate Terrorism

Boock and Speitel have publicly repudiated terrorism, and Boock has written a book urging his former associates to renounce terrorism. Supporters of clemency for the two argue that they have been rehabilitated and that their release from prison would encourage other terrorists to give themselves up.

Von Weizsaecker is known to be sympathetic to the idea of a pardon.

But many conservative politicians and publications have argued against a pardon.