Bonn Names New Defense Minister
Chancellor Helmut Kohl announced Tuesday the appointment of a little-known conservative West Berlin senator, Rupert Scholz, to the post of West German defense minister.
Scholz, 50, takes over May 18 from Manfred Woerner, who will succeed Britain’s Lord Carrington as secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on July 1.
Western diplomats reacted favorably to Scholz as successor to Woerner, a hard-liner frequently at odds with the detente policies of liberal Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher.
The opposition Social Democrats said Kohl’s decision to pick an outsider for the “biggest and most difficult ministry in Bonn” will cause criticism in the parliamentary group of his Christian Democratic Union.
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