Moves by Germany to Mend Relations Rebuffed by Bush

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, September 24, 2002

Moves by Germany to Mend Relations Rebuffed by Bush

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Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who won narrow re-election on Sunday in part by opposing an American war in Iraq, tried Monday to patch up relations with Washington, but President Bush broke with protocol and refrained from making the customary congratulatory telephone call to the German leader.

In Warsaw for a meeting of NATO defense ministers, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld announced that he would not meet his German counterpart, Peter Struck. Mr. Rumsfeld was blunt about the Schroeder campaign.

"The way it was conducted was notably unhelpful and, as the White House has indicated, had the effect of poisoning a relationship," he said, referring to criticism from the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, of the German justice minister, who reportedly compared President Bush's tactics to those of Hitler.

Aware of how angry the Bush administration is, Mr. Schroeder announced today that the justice minister, Herta D�ubler-Gmelin, would not be joining the new government.

But this gesture appeared unlikely to have any immediate impact. A senior administration official told reporters aboard Air Force One this morning, as Mr. Bush headed to a fund-raising event in New Jersey, that Mr. 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 an interview today, the German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, tried to repair the rift. "We'll work very hard to improve these relations, they are crucial for both sides, especially for us," Mr. Fischer said. "We have to go back to normal business with our most important ally, the United States, and with France, the most important outside of Europe and the most important ally inside."

Mr. Schroeder spoke during the campaign of a "German way," a phrase that caused unease on both sides of the Atlantic. The fact that a European election has been won on an antiwar ticket critical of the Bush administration will clearly complicate the President's efforts to win support in Europe and will make anti-Bush sentiment more acceptable.

Mr. Fischer sought to draw a line under the embarrassing episode involving the justice minister. Officials of Mr. Schroeder's Social Democratic Party estimated that her comments cost them between 1 percent and 2 percent of votes in the close-fought parliamentary election.

"This is very different now," said Mr. Fischer, when asked about relations with Washington."The minister has now resigned, and I think that's an important step."

Source: Agencies

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