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Politics : Piffer Thread on Political Rantings and Ravings -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MulhollandDrive who wrote (10294)	3/28/2003 1:00:02 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14610

story.news.yahoo.com Schroeder Says Still Friends with Bush, Blair By Clifford Coonan BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Friday played down current tensions with President Bush (news - web sites) and British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) over Iraq (news - web sites), saying the overall relationship was still intact. "In the final analysis, you will see that among friends -- and we are friends -- it's possible to have different opinions and remain friends," Schroeder in an interview with German television. Schroeder said he expected to talk to Bush at a meeting on May 30 and 31 in St Petersburg of leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized countries and Russia. Told that television cameras would be particularly focusing on whether he shook hands with Bush at the meeting, Schroeder laughed and said: "There are more important issues than the length and firmness of the handshake." Schroeder's anti-war stance is boosting his popularity among German voters -- a poll on Friday showed his Social Democrats edging up from a post-war low and 84 percent of German voters say they are opposed to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. However, his opposition to the war and refusal to join the U.S.-led campaign against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) has seriously strained relations with both the White House and Downing Street. Schroeder insisted that Germany, the United States and Britain had many other areas in common. "There is no lack of dialogue between us and the U.S. We must find a careful balance between our clear refusal to take part in the war, to which we are sticking, and meeting our duties as alliance partners. The Americans know this," he said. "There are talks and discussions on all levels. And on many questions we have common goals, such as on Turkey and on humanitarian aid," he said. BLAIR STILL A FRIEND Schroeder said his close relationship with Blair would survive the current dip and Britain remained a central plank in efforts to build a common European Union (news - web sites) defense policy. "These differences of opinion, even serious ones, don't affect my friendship with Tony Blair. There are many areas where we have identical views. You can't allow important relationships to break up, even over important questions such as this." "If we want to be able to react more effectively in the global organizations then we can't react in an isolated way as Germans, French, Italians or Britons but as Europe," he said. Blair acknowledged the tensions on Tuesday when he said relations between Europe and the United States would have to be reassessed after the war in Iraq, following huge divisions within the United Nations (news - web sites) in the run-up to war. Britain backed Washington's hawkish stance while the French and Germans opposed a second U.N. resolution sanctioning war. Schroeder said: "Great Britain is part of Europe and I hope this situation can be resolved in such a way so that it is clear that there can be no common defense policy without Britain taking part."