German intel. official: Israel, Europe caught in crosshairs of int'l terrorism

By HILARY LEILA KREIGER
The German intelligence chief who brokered the Hizbullah-Tannenbaum deal told an American Jewish delegation Thursday that Europe and Israel face shared threats as never before. "More then ever Israel and Europe as a single risk area are caught in the crosshairs of international terrorism," Ernst Uhrlau, president of the German Foreign Intelligence Service, told the American Jewish Committee at an event marking the organization's 100th anniversary. Green Party MP Reinhard Buetikofer termed that Islamic terror was "a new form of totalitarianism," and pointed to Germany's recent sale of submarines to Israel as an indication of his country's interest in safeguarding the Jewish state. Earlier in the day, Germany's Foreign and Defense Ministry officials stressed the importance they place on the Iranian threat. When it comes to dealing with Iran and its nuclear program, "no option is excluded," said Reinhard Silberberg, state secretary of the German Foreign Office. He added, however, that "no one's really thinking about the military option" because diplomacy efforts haven't run out. But the only speaker at the event not from the German government sounded a different note on the subject of an Iranian nuclear bomb. "We're going to have to live with it," said Josef Joffe, publisher of the German newspaper Die Zeit. "We have lived with the Soviet bomb." Joffe added that the same strategy used during the Cold War would be needed in the future. "It's called deterrence. It's called containment," he said.