Novelist Grass sets off furor with poem on nuclear crisis

BERLIN - Guenter Grass, the 84-year-old German Nobel literature laureate, triggered a storm Wednesday with a poem criticizing Israeli threats to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.

The novelist described Israel as a "cause of recognizable danger" and called on readers to "urge it to renounce force."

The poem, "What Must Be Said," was published by the Germany daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung and other newspapers.

Regarded for half a century as Germany's greatest living writer, Grass appealed for both Israeli and Iranian nuclear assets to be brought under "unhindered and permanent monitoring by an international institution."

Grass charged in the poem that Israel sought a first strike that would "wipe out the Iranian people, who are oppressed by a loudmouth" -- an apparent reference to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Germany's Central Council of Jews responded that it was saddened by the "aggressive" and "irresponsible" poem.

"An outstanding author is far from being an outstanding analyst of Middle East politics," said council chairman Dieter Graumann, adding that Grass had muddled his facts by claiming Israel, not Iran, was the threat to peace.

Grass, a leftist with an appetite for political controversy, won the Nobel in 1999. His 1958 novel "The Tin Drum" was an indictment of Germans in the Nazi era.

"Why am I only saying now, in old age, with my last ink, that the nuclear power Israel is endangering world peace which is already fragile?" the poem says. It argues he had been in denial because of the "punishment" that he would be accused of anti-Semitism.