Oct. 23 (UPI) — Russia’s foreign ministry has summoned Germany’s ambassador to lodge a formal protest over Berlin’s establishment of a new tactical maritime headquarters on its Baltic Sea coast.
Moscow’s foreign ministry on Tuesday said it told Ambassador Graf Lambsdorff that the headquarters “represents continuation of a creeping revision of the outcomes of World War II and is part of the efforts to militarize that country.”
“This action constitutes gross violation of the spirit and letter of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (the 2+4 Agreement), which was signed on September 12, 1990. According to Article 5, paragraph 3 of that treaty, Germany is under obligation not to allow the stationing or deployment of foreign troops on the territory of the former GDR. Berlin was requested to immediately provide exhaustive clarifications,” it said in a statement.
The 2+4 Agreement officially unified communist East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic, with democratic West Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The agreement, which is also known as the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, states that foreign armed forces and nuclear weapons will not be stationed in the territory of former East Germany following the withdrawal of Soviet forces.
The summoning came after Germany inaugurated a new naval tactical headquarters in Rostock on Monday. The Command Task Force Baltic headquarters will take on command tasks for NATO in the Baltic area.
Lambsdorff has rejected the criticism from Russia, German state-run broadcaster DW reported.
According to the news agency, Lambsdorff told his Russian counterparts: “The transformation of the German maritime command into the ‘Commander Task Force Baltic’ is in accordance with the Two-Plus-Four Treaty.”
“The assignment of German armed forces to the structures of NATO is also permitted under the Two-Plus-Four Treaty,” he said.
