The Frankfurt prosecutor's office intends to open an investigation against Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer for perjury, according to the dailies Berliner Zeitung and Bild Friday.
The two papers said the prosecutors had requested the lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag, to lift Fischer's parliamentary immunity, which would be necessary for the investigation to go ahead.
A spokesman for the Frankfurt prosecutor's office refused Friday to comment on the reports, and parliamentary officials said they had received no request for his immunity to be lifted.
The prosecutors received a number of complaints of perjury against Fischer after his January 16 appearance in court as a witness in the trial of repented terrorist Hans-Joachim Klein, who was convicted and sentenced to nine years' jail Thursday for his part in the 1975 hostage-taking at an OPEC conference in Vienna led by "Carlos the Jackal".
The complaints, including one from a former police officer, relate to the fact that Fischer said he had never harboured or had relations with any members of the terrorist Red Army Faction (RAF) - "so far as I can remember".
Former RAF member Margrit Schiller said in a 1999 autobiography that he had put her up in his Frankfurt apartment for a few days in 1973.
Noting the apparent contradictions, Frankfurt prosecutor Volker Rath said Thursday it was "perhaps necessary to clear them up.”
A few days after his court appearance, Fischer said that he had never lived in the same apartment as Schiller, only in the same building, and that he had never had contact with her -- BERLIN (AFP)
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