http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,774424,00.htmlThe deal involves a mountain of money: The German deal to sell Saudi Arabia 200 "Leopard" battle tanks is worth some €2 billion. Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has yet to directly confirm the deal -- and the opposition is furious . Given the pro-democracy movements in the region, it has demanded that Germany cease making arms deals with authoritarian regimes such as that in power in Saudi Arabia.
But now the opposition has found a new avenue of attack. Germany, after all, is involved in training Saudi security forces in conjunction with the European defense company EADS. And according to a recent report in the German newsweekly Stern, the mission is much more dicey than previously thought.
The training deal also involves a lot of money. According to Stern, Saudi Arabia awarded a €2 billion contract to EADS in 2008 to set up a state-of-the-art surveillance system along its 9,000 kilometer (5,600 miles) border. More precisely, the contract went to Cassidian, a Munich-based defense company that is an offshoot of EADS.
The report claims that senior members of Chancellor Merkel's government -- then a coalition between her conservatives and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) -- had a hand in closing the deal. The report mentions then-Interior Minister (and now Finance Minister) Wolfgang Schäuble, his state secretary August Hanning and then-Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of the SPD.