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POLITICS-GERMANY: Mending Fences with the U.S.
By Clive Freeman
BERLIN, Apr 24 (IPS) - After the angry fall-out with the U.S. over the Iraq
war, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's red-green government is now busy
attempting to improve ties with Washington.
Schroeder now says he could envisage a Bundeswehr "peace-keeping" force
being sent to the Middle East under the UN banner. "Germany has never ducked
being helpful when it's a question of creating and securing peace in a
region that is close to Europe," he says.
Germany already has some 10,000 soldiers, out of a total Bundeswehr
(armed forces) strength of 285,000, serving as peace-keepers in countries
like Afghanistan and Bosnia. But government officials say more could be
allocated for similar duties in Iraq, if required.
While France and Russia continue to call for the United Nations to be
given the lead in Iraq's post-war reconstruction - a notion that the Bush
administration rejects - Germany of late has been noticeably less dogmatic
over who should play what roles in the rebuilding of the country.
Anxious to heal the rift in relations with Washington, Schroeder has been
quietly signalling his government's willingness to help where it can, as
efforts aimed at stabilising Iraq get stepped up, and retired General Jay
Garner goes about his task of establishing a U.S.-backed, Iraqi-led,
"interim" government.
Already, Berlin has been showing practical goodwill by organising a flow
of humanitarian aid to Iraq, totalling more than an equivalent of 50 million
dollars, in the chaotic aftermath of war.
The Schroeder government, however, still holds to its belief that the
Iraq war could have been avoided had UN arms inspectors been allotted more
time to complete their work.
Both Schroeder and foreign minister Joschka Fischer are relieved the Iraq
war has ended without too much bloodshed, and that casualty figures have
been a lot lower than many predicted.
With Saddam Hussein's regime toppled, Fischer feels the Middle East
"roadmap" plan, aimed ultimately at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, might now stand a better chance of success.
The German foreign minister was heartened by Wednesday's successful talks
in Ramallah, West Bank, when a compromise cabinet for the governing
Palestinian authority, was approved by Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian
premier-designate Mahmoud Abbas, after intense international pressure.
The agreement broke a ten-day stalemate that had threatened to stall the
presentation by President George W. Bush of the new Middle East peace plan.
This envisages, if subsequent negotiations are successful, the creation of a
Palestinian state by 2005, and formal recognition of Israel's right to exist
within secure borders.
With an official U.S. declaration on the end of hostilities in Iraq
expected shortly, Joschka Fischer says he sees no sense in continuing the
debate about the war's legality. "Looking back won't help. We must move on,"
he says.
Three weeks earlier it was a very different story, as some German
government officials spoke openly of a war that carried "unquantifiable
risks," and which would "destabilise the entire region".
Kerstin Mueller, a deputy minister in the German Foreign Office, in a
speech to the German-Israeli Society in Berlin, warned of people becoming
increasingly radicalised, and hatred of the U.S. as well as Israel, growing
the longer the war lasted.
"There are two points l would like to make," she said. "Firstly wars
waged for the purpose of regime change are not sanctioned by the UN charter.
Secondly, can democracy come through the barrel of a gun? That is surely not
the vision we have for the century that lies ahead."
Mueller said that in Israel not a day passed without fear of terrorist
attacks, without people being killed or injured. "The bus-stop, the
supermarket, the restaurant, homes, nowhere can people feel safe. I often
wonder how we in Germany would react if that which we hold most dear - our
own lives and those of our friends and loved ones - were daily under
threat."
U.S.-German relations have certainly been under considerable strain in
recent months. Tens of thousands of Germans with relatives and friends
working in the United States have been shocked by accusations levelled at
them that they are "anti-American".
"Many of us take holidays in America. We're not anti-American. We're just
anti-Bush," says Reinhard Henkel, a Berlin schoolteacher, who took to the
streets last month to demonstrate against the Iraq war.
Other Germans find it embarrassing that Bush and Schroeder have not been
in touch with one another for months, in fact not since last November, when
they got together during the NATO summit in Prague.
"I do think the Chancellor should get on the phone to Bush and resolve
his differences," says a Berlin garbage collector. "The war's over, now the
peace must be won."
President Bush, diplomatic sources here claim, regard Schroeder's refusal
to back his war plans as "an act of disloyalty," and was stung by the
Chancellor stating very early on that even with a UN mandate, Germany would
not back the war against Iraq.
"The problem is the two men just do not hit it off," claimed a government
official in Berlin, who did not wish to be named. "Bush's view of the world
is not Schroeder's."
In the late 1970s there was similar strain when the "political chemistry"
between Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and U.S. President Jimmy Carter did not
work. "Both men found they had a problem of communication," said a British
diplomat in Berlin. (END/2003)
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