Germans See U.S. a Bigger Threat to Peace Than Iran, Poll Shows
bloomberg.com
By Claudia Rach
March 28 (Bloomberg) -- More Germans regard the U.S. as a threat to world peace than they do Iran, a poll showed, underscoring European concerns at President George W. Bush's policy of waging military campaigns to combat global terrorism.
Forty-eight percent of 1,003 people polled said the U.S. was a bigger threat to world peace, against 31 percent who said that the Islamic Republic posed more of a threat, according to the survey by opinion researcher Forsa for Stern magazine and RTL television. Fifteen percent said that both nations were equally dangerous to world peace.
The survey underlines German, and European, ambivalence toward U.S. foreign policy in general and on the Middle East in particular four years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. That's even after the U.S. was joined by fellow United Nations Security Council permanent members the U.K., Russia, France and China in voting March 24 to give Iran a 60-day deadline to halt uranium enrichment or face new sanctions.
While European policy since World War II is more focused on diplomacy and international development, ``the U.S. sees military action as an additional option to solve conflicts,'' Jan-Friedrich Kallmorgen, director of the Atlantic Initiative in Berlin, said in an interview today. ``U.S. foreign policy is often perceived in Europe as unilateral and aggressive.''
UN Demands
On Iran, both the U.S. and European nations agree that the Islamic Republic must adhere to UN resolutions and halt its nuclear program, which they say constitute an attempt to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is for domestic electricity generation. Russia and China too urged Iran March 26 to take ``necessary and constructive steps'' to meet UN demands.
Still, while Chinese President Hu Jintao and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin stressed that the issue ``should be solved exclusively though peaceful negotiation,'' U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said last month that ``all options are still on the table'' to halt Iran.
The poll is ``clearly more an anti-Bush policy reaction than anti-American reaction,'' Fred Irwin, head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany, said in an interview. ``Germans as well as many Americans are negative to what the Bush administration has decided.''
Some German politicians have tried to tap into a latent anti-American feeling in the country, Kallmorgen said. Former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder played that card during the 2002 election campaign when he refused to support the U.S. in its build-up to the invasion of Iraq the following year. That rejection of U.S. foreign policy secured Schroeder his re- election, yet strained previously solid German-U.S. relations.
Missile Shield
The Forsa poll also found German irritation at U.S. policy in Europe, with 54 percent saying that they regard U.S. plans to build an anti-ballistic missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic, both German neighbors, as a threat to peace in Europe.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, told reporters in Berlin March 15 that there was an ``urgency'' for Europe to unite behind the missile shield to counter ``a very serious threat'' from Iran.
Social Democratic Party leader Kurt Beck, whose party forms one half of Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition, has already come out against the shield, saying earlier this month that ``we don't need any new missiles in Europe.'' That contrasts with Merkel, who has called on the U.S. to discuss the issue within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization rather than bilaterally, though hasn't rejected it out of hand.
Beck is more in tune with those polled: 72 percent said they rejected the missile shield completely.
Forsa conducted the survey, which had a margin of error of 3 percentage points, between March 22 and March 23. |
