Germany denies alleged Merkel comment on camps

[September 17, 2010]  BERLIN (AP) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday denied that she had told French President Nicolas Sarkozy her country planned to evacuate its own illegal immigrant camps.

Sarkozy, who has drawn widespread international condemnation for ordering the clearing out some 100 illegal immigrant camps, many inhabited by Gypsies, told reporters after the European Union summit on Thursday that Germany planned similar action.

"Madame Merkel indicated to me her will to proceed in the coming weeks with the evacuation of camps. We will see at that point the calm that reigns in German political life," he said.

Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said the issue did not play any role in the leaders' discussions. He added that the situation of Gypsies, also known as Roma, in Germany cannot be compared with France.

"We do not have camps like that," Seibert said Friday at a regularly scheduled news conference. "It was not a topic."

Seibert said Merkel hadn't talked either at the EU summit or in conversation with Sarkozy in Brussels "about putative Roma camps in Germany, not to mention their being cleared."

Debate over France's Roma expulsions dominated the EU summit Thursday.

In recent weeks, French authorities have moved in and dismantled the camps, which Sarkozy says are havens of crime and squalor. More than 1,000 Roma have been deported from France, mainly back to Romania.

Seibert refused to comment on how the comments had originated or what was behind them, warning that they should not be taken out of proportion.

"We should not blow this up into a strain on French-German relations," Seibert said.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, in an interview earlier Friday with Deutschlandfunk radio, described Sarkozy's comment on the chancellor's alleged plan as a "misunderstanding."

Earlier this week, EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding sharply criticized the deportations and linked them to France's mass deportations of Jews during World War II. She later expressed regret over the wartime comparison, but maintained her threat to take France to court for targeting an ethnic group in the expulsions.

Germany has criticized the tone of Reding's comments but has steered clear of comment on the expulsions themselves.

The wartime comparison stung many in France. The country deported some 76,000 Jews from France to Nazi concentration camps and kept thousands of Gypsies in camps in France during the war.

[Associated Press]

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