POLITICS-GERMANY: U.S. Policy Tops German Agenda

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Yojana Sharma

BERLIN, Sep 24 2002 (IPS) - Washington’s cool response to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s victory has made foreign policy top priority for the new government.

European countries welcomed the “continuity” brought by Schroeder’s return to office, but the U.S. barely disguised its disappointment that Edmund Stoiber of the conservative Christian Socialist party did not win. Stoiber had backed U.S. policy on Iraq during his election campaign.

On the other hand Schroeder made his opposition to a war on Iraq a central theme of his campaign. President George W. Bush pointedly did not telephone the German leader to congratulate him on his re-election. U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Schroeder’s campaign had been “poisoning ties” between Berlin and Washington.

White House officials speak of the need to repair the “excesses of election”. U.S. diplomats fear that Germany’s opposition to war in Iraq could have a ripple effect on other European countries.

Economic issues are pressing, and massive flood damage in the southern and eastern parts of Germany have worsened economic stagnation, but Schroeder’s first major political meeting was in London Tuesday to discuss Iraq with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. U.S. diplomats want Blair to mediate with Schroeder to repair the damage in relations.

Blair has backed Bush staunchly in his push to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein even in the face of opposition within his own party. Schroeder who said he will oppose war with Iraq even if the UN (United Nations) approves it, has earned kudos at home.

France has also opposed military action in Iraq, pointing to the repercussions it would have in the Middle East. But French President Jacques Chirac has been far less strident than Schroeder who has been condemning what he has called “adventurism” in the Middle East. Germany has sent peacekeeping missions to Kosovo, Macedonia and Afghanistan in a reversal of its post-World War II policy against sending troops abroad, but Schroeder has drawn the line on Iraq.

The improved showing of Schroeder’s coalition partner, the Green Party, means it is unlikely that Schroeder will reverse his stance. Led by popular foreign minister Joschka Fischer, the Greens improved their share of the vote from 6.7 per cent four years ago to 8.7 per cent, giving the party increased clout in the new government. The pacifist Greens solidly oppose German participation in a war in Iraq.

Fischer is likely to visit the U.S. later this month in an attempt to repair relations and “explain the German position,” officials say. Fischer said Monday that the U.S. was Germany’s most important NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) partner.

The Green party takes a stronger view than Schroeder’s Social Democrats against a war in Iraq, but Fischer himself was less strident than Schroeder during the election campaign. He was careful to praise Germany’s partnership with the U.S. before criticising Bush’s policy on Iraq.

Schroeder is trying to making some amends. He reminded U.S. diplomats Monday that he had put his own political career on the line in sending German troops to Afghanistan. Schroeder had said in the Bundestag, the German parliament, that a vote against sending troops would amount to a vote against himself and that he would resign if he lost. He won by a narrow margin.

In another move, Schroeder has sacked former justice minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin. Bush was particularly incensed by Daeubler-Gmelin’s reported remarks in a German newspaper that he was using Iraq to distract attention from domestic problems just as Hitler had done. Schroeder has said she would not be taking a ministerial position in his new government.

But Schroeder has made it clear he would not be browbeaten into changing a stance which had won him more votes than any other issue. “I think this difference of opinion will remain,” Schroeder says. “We will have it out in a fair and open way without in any way endangering the basis of German-American relations.”

Schroeder’s majority in the Bundestag has been reduced from 21 to nine. Stoiber says the thin majority will not hold. “This Schroeder government will rule for only a very short time,” Stoiber said Monday. “What I condemn above all is that he opened the floodgates for anti-American sentiments.”

Stoiber said he would visit the U.S. shortly to make it clear that Schroeder’s position towards the U.S. was not shared by all of Germany. But since the election Stoiber too has begun to say he does not want Germany involved in an attack.