Vice-Chancellor of Germany
What was the position of Klaus Kinkel from 1993 to Oct 1998?
Klaus Kinkel Klaus Kinkel ( 17 December 1936 – 4 March 2019 ) was a German statesman , civil servant , diplomat and lawyer who served as Foreign Minister ( 1992–1998 ) and Vice Chancellor of Germany ( 1993–1998 ) in the government of Helmut Kohl . Kinkel was a career civil servant and a longtime aide to Hans-Dietrich Genscher , and served as his personal secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior from 1970 and in senior roles in the Foreign Office from 1974 . He was President of Federal Intelligence Service from 1979 to 1982 and a state secretary in the Federal Ministry of Justice from 1982 to 1991 . In 1991 he was appointed as the Federal Minister of Justice and joined the liberal Free Democratic Party ( FDP ) shortly after . In 1992 he became Foreign Minister , and in 1993 he also became the Vice Chancellor of Germany and the leader of the Free Democratic Party . He left the government in 1998 following its electoral defeat . Kinkel was a member of the Bundestag from 1994 to 2002 , and was later active as a lawyer and philanthropist . During his brief tenure as Minister of Justice he pressed for the extradition and criminal prosecution of deposed East German dictator Erich Honecker and sought to end the left-wing terrorism of the Red Army Faction . As Foreign Minister he is regarded as one of the most influential European politicians of the 1990s . He personified an assertive foreign policy , increased Germanys peacekeeping engagements overseas , was at the forefront among Western leaders of building a relationship with Boris Yeltsins newly democratic Russian Federation and pressed for Germany to be given a permanent seat on the UN Security Council . He also championed the Maastricht Treaty , the merging of the Western European Union with the EU to give the EU an independent military capability and the expansion of the EU . Kinkel played a central role in the efforts to resolve the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s , and proposed the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia . Education . Kinkel was born in Metzingen , Baden-Württemberg , into a Catholic family , and grew up mostly in Hechingen , where his father Ludwig Leonhard Kinkel practised as a medical doctor and internist . His father was President of the local tennis club , and Klaus Kinkel was an able tennis player in his youth . He took his Abitur at the Staatliches Gymnasium Hechingen in 1956 and first studied medicine , then law at the universities of Tübingen and Bonn . He joined A.V . Guestfalia Tübingen , a Catholic student fraternity that is a member of the Cartellverband . Kinkel took his first juristic state exam at Tübingen , the second in Stuttgart and earned a doctorate of law in 1964 in Cologne . Career as a civil servant . In 1965 , Kinkel began work at the Federal Ministry of the Interior , concentrating on the security of the civilian population ( ziviler Bevölkerungsschutz ) . He was sent to the Landratsamt in Balingen , Baden-Württemberg until 1966 . He returned to the national ministry in 1968 . He was personal secretary and speechwriter for the Federal Minister , Hans-Dietrich Genscher , from 1970 to 1974 , and eventually the head of the ministers office . After Genscher was appointed Foreign Minister in 1974 , Kinkel held senior positions in the Federal Foreign Office , as head of the Leitungsstab and the policy planning staff ( Planungsstab ) . President of the Federal Intelligence Service . From 1979 to 1982 he was president of the Federal Intelligence Service ( BND ) . He is credited with quietly and competently restoring confidence in the BND after a series of scandal in the preceding years . He also expanded the BNDs intelligence-gathering outside of Europe . State secretary . From 1982 to 1991 , Kinkel was a state secretary ( Staatssekretär ) in the Federal Ministry of Justice . Political career . Federal Minister of Justice . Kinkel was Federal Minister of Justice from 18 January 1991 to 18 May 1992 . Among other achievements , he took the lead in pressing for the return of Erich Honecker , the former East German leader , to face trial . He also engaged in public negotiations with the terrorist Red Army Faction , successfully urging them to renounce violence . Minister of Foreign Affairs and FDP chairman . In a surprise decision on 29 April 1992 , the members of the FDP parliamentary group rejected the nomination of Germanys designated new Foreign Minister , Irmgard Schwaetzer , and voted instead to name Kinkel to head the Federal Foreign Office . Kinkel played a key role in the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and helped to draft its statutes . He also unsuccessfully introduced a resolution at a meeting of European Community foreign ministers that would have committed each of the member countries to accept more refugees from the Balkans . Later that year , he announced Germanys wish for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council , arguing that Britain and France would never agree to an alternative plan under which they would merge their national seats into a single permanent seat representing the European Union . Kinkel was a signatory of the Dayton Agreement that ended the Bosnian War in 1995 . Under the leadership of Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Kinkel , the German Bundestag in 1993 agreed on a three-point amendment to the 1949 Constitution that for the first time let German troops take part in international peacekeeping operations sanctioned by the United Nations and other bodies , subject to advance approval by parliament . Shortly after , the German Parliament approved a controversial troop deployment under the umbrella of the United Nations Operation in Somalia II , clearing the final hurdle for what was then Germanys biggest deployment of ground forces abroad since World War II . Also under Kinkel’s leadership , Germany began destroying stockpiles of tanks and other heavy weapons in the early 1990s , becoming the first country to implement the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe . In 1995 , China dismissed a personal appeal from Kinkel to release Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng and expelled journalist Henrik Bork , a reporter for the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau . One year later , China abruptly canceled a planned visit to Beijing by Kinkel , citing a German parliamentary resolution that condemned Chinas human rights record in Tibet . A strong supporter of European integration , Kinkel successfully advocated for Germany to ratify the Maastricht Treaty on European political and economic union in December 1992 , making it the 10th of the 12 European Community nations to sign on . In 1994 , he had to abandon his candidate for President of the European Commission , Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene of Belgium , following protest by British Prime Minister John Major . In 1997 , he argued that Turkey did not qualify because of its record on human rights , the Kurdish question , relations with Greece and of course very clear economic questions . On Kinkel’s initiative , Germany became the first government to declare a suspension of contacts with Bosnias envoys abroad after a recommendation made by the High Representative of the International Community in Bosnia-Herzegovina , Carlos Westendorp . From 21 January 1993 , Kinkel was also Vice-Chancellor of Germany . From 1993 to 1995 he also served as chairman of the FDP . After the Free Democrats won barely enough votes to get into the Bundestag in 1994 and later lost badly in 12 out of 14 state and European Parliament elections , Kinkel announced that he would not seek re-election as party chairman . He resigned as Foreign Minister and Vice-Chancellor after the governments defeat in the 1998 federal election . Member of Parliament . Kinkel was a member of the Bundestag , the Parliament of Germany , from 1994 to 2002 . Life after politics . After leaving government in 1998 , Kinkel worked as a lawyer and was engaged in a number of philanthropic and business activities , including the following : - Bundesliga Foundation , Member of the Board of Trustees - Sepp Herberger Foundation , Member of the Board of Trustees - International Club La Redoute Bonn , Member of the Advisory Board - United Nations Association of Germany ( DGVN ) , Member of the Presidium - Deutsche Initiative für den Nahen Osten ( DINO ) , Member of the Board of Trustees - Lehman Brothers , Member of European Advisory Council ( since 2002 ) - Deutsche Telekom Foundation , Founding Chairman of the Executive Board ( 2003-2014 ) - EnBW , Member of the Advisory Board ( 2004-2009 ) At the request of Chancellor Angela Merkel , Kinkel represented the German government at the 2011 funeral of Sultan bin Abdulaziz , the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia . In November 2016 , Kinkel was elected as president of a newly created ethics commission of the German Football Association ( DFB ) ; the commission is part of the DFBs declared drive for more transparency and integrity following revelations of a financial scandal around the 2006 FIFA World Cup it hosted . Publication . - Bewegte Zeiten für Europa! , in : Robertson-von Trotha , Caroline Y . ( ed. ) : Europa in der Welt – die Welt in Europa ( = Kulturwissenschaft interdisziplinär/Interdisciplinary Studies on Culture and Society , Vol . 1 ) , Baden-Baden 2006 ,