touchy...?
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USA today - 09/23/2002 - Updated 07:10 PM ET
By Steven Komarow, USA TODAY
BERLIN — Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who won a narrow electoral victory after campaigning forcefully against U.S. war plans for Iraq, said Monday that he will stick by his position despite the tension his stand has created with the Bush administration.
The White House, angered when Schroeder used his opposition to an Iraq war to boost his electoral fortunes in Sunday's election, did not issue the customary re-election congratulations.
The administration also was appalled when one of Schroeder's ministers reportedly compared Bush's foreign policy tactics with Hitler's. The minister, who later denied the report, was forced to resign. Schroeder wrote Bush to apologize. A senior Bush administration official said Monday that Schroeder and his government "have a lot of work to do to repair the damage that he did by his excesses during the campaign."
In Warsaw, at a NATO meeting, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday that the German government's election campaign "was notably unhelpful" at a time when Bush is seeking international solidarity against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Schroeder stuck by his emphatic opposition to a war on Iraq.
"This difference of opinion will remain," he said. "There is no need to depart from what we said before the election, and we will change nothing."
He pledged a "self-confident foreign and security policy which is oriented toward our partners."
Returns released Monday showed that Schroeder's left-leaning coalition has a 9-seat majority in the 603-seat parliament. That's down from 21 seats.
Edmund Stoiber, leader of the conservative opposition, predicted the government would collapse before long.
Schroeder, who carries a host of unsolved problems, particularly a stagnant economy, conceded that his second four-year term will not be easy. Germany has been slowly slipping behind the rest of Europe in growth. Unemployment is creeping up, to nearly 10%.
"We have hard times in front of us," said Schroeder, leader of the Social Democrats, at a rally with Joschka Fischer, leader of the Greens, the minority partner in the government. "We're going to make it together," Schroeder said.
Fischer, the foreign minister, has been more cautious on Iraq and likely will be dispatched to mend fences. But there will be tensions when Bush and Schroeder are together at the NATO summit in the Czech Republic in November.
"In six weeks, Schroeder will be sitting in Prague with President Bush, and I don't see how he can turn it around by then," said Gary Smith of The American Academy in Berlin.
The United States is a key economic partner and defended Germany through four decades of Cold War. So there's little doubt the two nations will maintain ties. Companies like Daimler-Chrysler guarantee that their trans-Atlantic business relationship will continue.
Even so, the White House made clear that it won't make much difference if Germany isn't a good ally — a major insult to a nation that covets a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
John Hulsman, of the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, said it was up to Germany to fix things. But he said there would be lasting damage because of what the election revealed about the German electorate.
"It shows that anti-Americanism pays at the polls," Hulsman said.
He also said what was a great short-term electoral strategy will hurt Germany in the end. "What this means is that Germany doesn't get a seat at the grownups' table when dealing with geopolitical issues," Hulsman said.
Contributing: Judy Keen in Washington, wire reports |
