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Newsletter : 9fax0208.txt
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>PD
>Israel Faxx
>Feb. 8, 1999, Vol. 7, No. 26
Abdullah Ascends Jordan's Throne
By Scott Bobb (VOA-Amman)
Jordan's King Hussein, who ruled for 46-years, is dead. His son
Abdullah was sworn in as king only two-weeks after being named
crown prince in a move that sidelined his uncle, the late king's
younger brother. The transition has been sudden for a people who,
for the most part, have known no other king.
Abdullah was sworn in as Jordan's fourth monarch, less than 4 hours
after the announcement his father died from cancer in an Amman
hospital. The new monarch has picked his heir, naming his
half-brother, Hamzah, to be crown prince. The country is in
mourning as it prepares for an influx of visitors Monday for the
funeral.
Jordan is in a period of national mourning. Flags are at
half-mast. Verses from the Koran are being chanted from the
minarets of mosques across the country and on all radio and
television stations.
The 63-year-old monarch returned home Friday after an unsuccessful
attempt to halt the spread of his cancer. Since then, Jordanians by
the hundreds have kept vigil outside his hospital, praying for
his recovery and chanting -- long live the king.
The Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority ordered flags
flown at half-staff in an expression of shared sorrow for a leader,
who even in the final weeks of his life, had been working for
Middle-East peace.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will attend the funeral
in Amman with President Ezer Weizman and other Israeli political
figures. Netanyahu said all Israelis bow their heads in grief at
the passing of the king. Netanyahu said King Hussein was one of the
few real leaders on the world stage whose place in history was
clear even before his death.
Most Jordanians were not yet born, when Hussein assumed the
Hashemite throne in 1952. As a result, many Jordanians view the
late monarch as a father figure, and his passing has given rise to
a deep sense of loss combined with anxiety about the future.
A prominent Jordanian who went to school with the late king is former Foreign Minister Kamel abu-Jaber, who now heads Jordan's Institute of Diplomacy. Abu-Jaber says King Hussein established most of the institutions of modern-day Jordan.
"He has always shunned the use of violence and tried to build a
civil society in the true sense of the word. That is really a civil
society, a parliament, a functioning parliament, a democracy that
is more or less always functioning, whether it was formal sometimes
or not formal. I think his legacy is -- he built the country."
Holocaust Compensation Talks are Scheduled
By Mike O'Sullivan (VOA-Los Angeles)
Today, German and US officials will hold talks in Washington over
compensation for Jewish victims of the Nazi regime. Germany's
largest bank, Deutsche Bank, will probably be part of that
settlement.
Deutsche Bank has admitted it helped finance construction of the
Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, but one Jewish organization
says the admission is not enough to satisfy the victims.
Friday, the Simon Wiesenthal Center displayed a report on Deutsche
Bank that has been in its archives for 20 years. Dated November
1946, the report was compiled by investigators for the US military
government of post-war Germany.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Wiesenthal Center's director, read from the
three main recommendations of the report. "It is recommended that
'the Deutsche Bank be liquidated,' that 'the responsible officials
of the Deutsche Bank be indicted and tried as war criminals,'
that 'the leading officials of the Deutsche Bank be barred from
positions of importance or responsibility in German economic or
political life.'"
The officials were not tried -- possibly, speculates Hier,
because their financial expertise was needed to rebuild Germany.
And the bank was not disbanded. One Deutsche Bank official,
Hermann Abs, became a leading financial figure in post-war Europe.
The Wiesenthal Center director says the report outlines Deutsche
Bank's role as a major source of funding for a rubber plant in the
Auschwitz death camp. It was operated by the industrial firm I.G.
Farben using camp inmates as unpaid workers.
Deutsche Bank's former role as the major financial institution in
Nazi Germany -- and as personal banker to Hitler and other leading
party officials -- is under special scrutiny now. US officials are
considering whether to approve Deutsche Bank's proposed "$10
billion takeover of the US corporation Bankers Trust. Deutsche
Bank has also been named in an $18 billion lawsuit by the families
of Holocaust victims.
A global settlement for Holocaust victims who lost their funds in
German banks and for survivors of Nazi labor camps would set up a
fund for claimants. It would be much like the fund created by
banks in Switzerland last year, which will pay $1.25 billion to
families of Holocaust victims who lost their savings in Swiss
banks.
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