Getting your player ready...
Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing growing criticism from across the political spectrum after news of a multibillion-dollar deal for the secret sale of 200 tanks to Saudi Arabia leaked from the national security council that approved it.
Germany strained ties with its NATO allies when it abstained in the U.N. Security Council on the resolution authorizing military action to protect Libyan civilians. Now the government has approved the shipment of the 68-ton tanks to Saudi Arabia even as the image of Saudi tanks rolling into Bahrain to help suppress the protests there remains fresh in the public mind.
Not only political opponents but members of Merkel’s party have criticized the sale on human-rights grounds.
