GERMANY-DEVELOPMENT: Bonn Bent on Being Home to U.N. Organisation

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ramesh Jaura

BONN, Dec 30 1994 (IPS) - Germany’s government is hoping to succeed in luring at least one U.N. organisation to Bonn in a bid to boost the city’s image as the government prepares to shift its institutions to the new capital, Berlin, toward the year 2000.

The bid to host the United Nations Volunteers Programme (UNV) is also part of Germany’s overall goal of turning Bonn — which served as the capital of post-war West Germany until unification with the former East Germany four years ago — into a ‘North-South Centre’.

The authorities fear that once the federal parliament ‘Bundestag’ and government offices — excepting a few ministries and some other institutions — move to Berlin, the traditional university town of Bonn, with a population of some 300,000, will be reduced to a few pubs downtown and old villas on the other end.

This would cost jobs, a situation the local, provincial and federal authorities want to avoid, particularly as Germany’s largest populated state, North-Rhine Westfalia (NRW), in which Bonn is located, has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country — 9.3 percent.

Since a UNV delegation visited Bonn Dec. 14-16, Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Carl-Dieter Spranger and the new mayor of Bonn, Baerbel Dieckmann, have expressed optimism that their efforts will bear fruit in the new year.

All the more so since Bonn on the banks of the river Rhine has already lost the battle to have the new ‘World Trade Organisation’ (WTO) — the successor to the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) — moved out of Geneva.

Germany also failed in getting the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) to shift from its New York base, despite an attractive offer that included a substantial logistical and financial support.

Kinkel, Spranger and Dieckmann now hope an equally generous offer will persuade the UNV to shift to Bonn. Their optimism is also based on assurances reportedly given by U.N. Secretary- General Boutros Boutros-Ghali that he will recommend to the UNDP executive council to decide in favour of moving UNV from Geneva to Bonn.

“With this assurance, we have the foreign policy framework conditions for a positive decision” — expected in mid-January, the Foreign Office quoted Kinkel in a Dec. 22 statement. Kinkel, it added, was also “satisfied at the assurances of support” given by the United States, Japan and France.