Product Code Database
Klaus Kinkel (17 December 1936 – 4 March 2019) Prägende Figur der FDP – Ex-Außenminister Klaus Kinkel ist tot, ZDF 5. March 2019 was a German Diplomat, civil servant, diplomat and lawyer who served as the minister of Foreign affairs (1992–1998) and the vice chancellor of Germany (1993–1998) in the government of Helmut Kohl.
Kinkel was a career civil servant and a longtime aide to Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and served as his personal secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior from 1970 and in senior roles in the Foreign Office from 1974. He was President of Federal Intelligence Service from 1979 to 1982 and a state secretary in the Federal Ministry of Justice from 1982 to 1991. In 1991 he was appointed as the Federal Minister of Justice and joined the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) shortly after. In 1992 he became Foreign Minister, and in 1993 he also became the Vice Chancellor of Germany and the leader of the Free Democratic Party. He left the government in 1998 following its electoral defeat. Kinkel was a member of the Bundestag from 1994 to 2002, and was later active as a lawyer and philanthropist.
During his brief tenure as Minister of Justice he pressed for the extradition and criminal prosecution of deposed East German dictator Erich Honecker and sought to end the left-wing terrorism of the Red Army Faction. As Foreign Minister he is regarded as one of the most influential European politicians of the 1990s. He personified an "assertive foreign policy", increased Germany's peacekeeping engagements overseas, was at the forefront among Western leaders of building a relationship with Boris Yeltsin's newly democratic Russian Federation and pressed for Germany to be given a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. He also championed the Maastricht Treaty, the merging of the Western European Union with the EU to give the EU an independent military capability and the expansion of the EU. Kinkel played a central role in the efforts to resolve the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, and proposed the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Kinkel played a key role in the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and helped to draft its statutes. He also unsuccessfully introduced a resolution at a meeting of European Community foreign ministers that would have committed each of the member countries to accept more refugees from the Balkans.Stephen Kinzer (29 July 1992), Germany Chides Europe About Balkan Refugees New York Times. Later that year, he announced Germany's wish for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, arguing that Britain and France would never agree to an alternative plan under which they would merge their national seats into a single permanent seat representing the European Union.Paul Lewis (24 September 1992), Germany Tells the U.N. It Wants A Permanent Seat on the Council New York Times. Kinkel was a signatory of the Dayton Agreement that ended the Bosnian War in 1995.
Under the leadership of Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Kinkel, the German Bundestag in 1993 agreed on a three-point amendment to the 1949 Constitution that for the first time let German troops take part in international peacekeeping operations sanctioned by the United Nations and other bodies, subject to advance approval by parliament.Craig R. Whitney (14 January 1993), Kohl and Partners in Accord on Peacekeeping New York Times. Shortly after, the German Parliament approved a controversial troop deployment under the umbrella of the United Nations Operation in Somalia II, clearing the final hurdle for what was then Germany's biggest deployment of ground forces abroad since World War II. Bonn Parliament OKs Somalia Troops Los Angeles Times, 3 July 1993. Also under Kinkel’s leadership, Germany began destroying stockpiles of tanks and other heavy weapons in the early 1990s, becoming the first country to implement the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. Germany Begins Cutbacks Under Weapons Treaty Los Angeles Times, 4 August 1992.
In 1995, China dismissed a personal appeal from Kinkel to release Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng and expelled journalist Henrik Bork, a reporter for the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau.Rone Tempest (28 December 1995), Court Rejects Appeal of China Dissident Wei Los Angeles Times. One year later, China abruptly canceled a planned visit to Beijing by Kinkel, citing a German parliamentary resolution that condemned China's human rights record in Tibet.Alan Cowell (25 June 1996), Germany's Concerns Over Rights in Tibet Clash With Trade Ties to China New York Times.
A strong supporter of European integration, Kinkel successfully advocated for Germany to ratify the Maastricht Treaty on European political and economic union in December 1992, making it the 10th of the 12 European Community nations to sign on. Germany Ratifies Maastricht Treaty Los Angeles Times, 19 December 1992. In 1994, he had to abandon his candidate for President of the European Commission, Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene of Belgium, following protest by British Prime Minister John Major.Tom Buerkle (30 June 1994), Bonn Seeks To Break EU Logjam International Herald Tribune. In 1997, he argued that Turkey did not qualify because of its record on "human rights, the Kurdish question, relations with Greece and of course very clear economic questions."Stephen Kinzer (27 March 1997), Europeans Shut the Door on Turkey's Membership in Union New York Times. On Kinkel’s initiative, Germany became the first government to declare a suspension of contacts with Bosnia's envoys abroad after a recommendation made by the High Representative of the International Community in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Carlos Westendorp. Contact Suspended With Bosnia Envoys Los Angeles Times, 4 August 1997.
From 21 January 1993, Kinkel was also Vice Chancellor of Germany. From 1993 to 1995 he also served as chairman of the FDP. After the Free Democrats won barely enough votes to get into the Bundestag in 1994Craig R. Whitney (20 October 1994), Kohl's Free Democratic Allies Shaken by Big Election Losses New York Times. and later lost badly in 12 out of 14 state and European Parliament elections, Kinkel announced that he would not seek re-election as party chairman. He resigned as Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor after the government's defeat in the 1998 federal election.
At the request of Chancellor Angela Merkel, Kinkel represented the German government at the 2011 funeral of Sultan bin Abdulaziz, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.Christian Rickens (5 January 2016), Time To Cut Ties With Saudi Arabia Handelsblatt.
In November 2016, Kinkel was elected as president of a newly created ethics commission of the German Football Association (DFB); the commission is part of the DFB's declared drive for more transparency and integrity following revelations of a financial scandal around the 2006 FIFA World Cup it hosted. Klaus Kinkel to head up German federation's ethics commission ESPN FC, 3 November 2016.
|
|
