Germany Condemns Attackers

The German government on Wednesday officially condemned an attack on American luge athletes training in Germany and demanded that the offenders be prosecuted “to the full extent of the law.”

The statement, read to reporters by a government spokesman in Bonn, came after the incident, apparently racially motivated, was discussed at Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s weekly Cabinet meeting.

Later Wednesday, residents of the small eastern German town of Oberhof, where American lugers were attacked last weekend by skinhead toughs, convened a town meeting to condemn the attack.

The incident was merely the latest of more than 4,700 attacks carried out by right-wing extremist groups in Germany in the past two years against foreigners.

While the town of Oberhof stands to lose the most from the incident, Germany’s international image has clearly sustained another severe jolt. In a bitterly worded front-page commentary in its Tuesday editions, the leading capital daily, Berliner Zeitung, declared, “After the light-hearted, peaceful track and field World Championships in Stuttgart, the punches of Oberhof have now compromised all sports, with immeasurable consequences.”