Schroeder’s Foreign Policy Provokes Internal Battles

BERLIN — Despite cries that he is making a mistake of historic proportions, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder pecked away at Washington’s Iraq policy on Wednesday, swiftly dismissing American suggestions that there is an alliance of interests between Saddam Hussein and the Al Qaeda terror network.

“From what is known so far we don’t think we can conclude that there is evidence of an axis or close link between the regime in Baghdad and Al Qaeda,” government spokesman Thomas Steg said the morning after Osama bin Laden purportedly issued a call for Muslims to rally to defend Iraq.

And Schroeder repeated that Germany will resist any new steps toward war when the U.N. Security Council convenes Friday. Instead, Berlin will join France and Russia to push for more muscular inspections.

Germany is chairing the 15-member Security Council this month. Keeping his country out of a war with Iraq has become an article of political faith for Schroeder. His vow of “no war” emerged in the final days of last year’s election campaign and is widely thought to have been a key element in his close victory.

But the vow also has unnerved a huge swath of the German political class. Even if the foreign policy establishment is nervous about Washington’s war talk on Iraq, it is alarmed by what it sees as Schroeder’s willingness to gamble with Germany’s close ties to the United States.

The chancellor will defend his Iraq policy in what is expected to be a raucous session of the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, today, but heavy criticism of Schroeder preceded the event. The Berliner Zeitung newspaper this week called Schroeder a “hotblooded amateur.” And opposition leader Edmund Stoiber, whom Schroeder defeated in September, likened the chancellor’s foreign policy performance to the machinations of Kaiser Wilhelm II, which contributed to the start of World War I.

There are also widespread reports of a chill in relations between Schroeder and his popular foreign minister and coalition partner, Joschka Fischer.

Fischer is also opposed to a war on Iraq, but associates say he is privately appalled that Germany’s transatlantic bonds are being frayed in the process.

“Fischer is suffering,” said Hans-Ulrich Klose, a senior member of Schroeder’s Social Democratic Party and deputy chairman of the German parliament’s foreign affairs committee. Klose has broken with Schroeder and publicly attacked what he sees as the bungled handling of the relationship with Washington.

“We are in a state of all-around damage,” he told The Times in an interview from his Berlin office Wednesday. “We have damaged U.S.-German relations; we have damaged our position in Europe; we damaged NATO and we damaged the United Nations. We didn’t leave anything out.”

Schroeder on Wednesday ended a two-day summit in the Canary Islands with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who backs U.S. policy on Iraq. “I don’t think the problem we have before us is a problem of the inspectors,” Aznar said. “What’s before us is the lack of willingness” by Iraq to cooperate.

But Schroeder’s promise to keep military forces out of Iraq does have the advantage of being popular with the German public. Opinion polls since September have steadily indicated that four out of five Germans oppose war on Iraq, even as their view of Schroeder’s center-left government soured following the election.

With the nation battered by dismal economic news, critics say Schroeder is using Iraq as a diversion.

“This is not a question of personal conviction -- I know that,” said Klose, who described a verbal clash with his longtime colleague at a meeting of the party’s parliamentary wing Tuesday. He said President Bush feels cheated by Schroeder.

“So now we are again in a situation where people say, ‘You cannot count on these Germans,’ ” Klose said. “And that is a bad thing.”