BERLIN, Sept 19: Relations between Germany and the United States, frayed over a likely war on Iraq, took a turn for the worse on Thursday when German Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin compared George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler.

With her Social Democrats fighting out the tough final days of a campaign for Sunday’s election, Daeubler-Gmelin made the remark while talking to metalworkers about US plans for a possible attack on Baghdad.

“Bush wants to divert attention from domestic political problems. It’s a method that is sometimes favoured. Hitler also did that,” she said, according to a report by the Schwaebisches Tagblatt newspaper.

“This statement by the justice minister is outrageous and is inexplicable,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters in Washington.

“The president was very angered by these comments and (national security advisor Condoleezza) Rice took this very personally as well,” a senior US official, who declined to be named, said separately.

“We have made our views known to the German government both here and in Berlin,” the official said, calling the comments an “ad hominem attack on the president of the United States, a close ally and friend of Germany.”

Daeubler-Gmelin, who is a lawyer by profession, later issued a statement said she had never put Bush and Hitler on the “same level” and said the newspaper’s report was incorrect.

“I am surprised by this article because it is erroneous and inflammatory to imply that I compared a man who was democratically elected, the American President George W. Bush, and the Nazi era,” her statement said.

The conservative opposition, which is neck-and-neck with the Social Democrats of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, called immediately for her resignation.

Schroeder, who has revived his re-election bid with his firm stand against a US attack to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, came to his minister’s defence, a government spokesman said.

“Anyone who compared the American president with criminals would not have a place in government,” he said, according to a government spokesman.

Relations between Washington and Berlin have been strained since Schroeder ruled out German participation in any military attack on Iraq with or without a new UN mandate.

Schroeder’s opposition to any military action against Iraq, even with UN backing, has struck a chord in a country still traumatized by its militaristic past. Germany is the Washington’s only major western ally to categorically reject military force against Baghdad.

Polls show Schroeder’s Social Democrats, who was trailing by several percentage points just weeks ago, now just about even with Edmund Stoiber’s conservatives for Sunday’s vote.

Senior Bush: Former US president George Bush, in an interview with CNN broadcast on Wednesday, said he hates Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein but stressed he has no regrets over failing to oust him during the 1991 invasion.

“I hate Saddam Hussein,” the father of the current US president told CNN’s Paula Zahn in an exclusive interview conducted about 800kms off the Japanese mainland near an island where he was shot down as a US Navy pilot during World War II.

“I don’t hate easily, but I think he’s, as I say, his word is no good and he’s a brute... So, there’s nothing redeeming about this man...I have nothing but hatred in my heart for him. He’s got a lot of problems, but immortality isn’t one of them.”

Reminiscing about the 1991 attack on Iraq, the former president noted that coalition military commanders were ordered to boot Iraqi forces ouf of Kuwait and they carried out the mission.

He said the US-led coalition would have shattered had troops been ordered to roll into Baghdad and topple Saddam Hussein.

“I know what would have happened. I know that the coalition would have shattered...My only regret is that I was wrong, as was every leader in thinking that Saddam Hussein would be gone,” he added. “We told our military commanders, ‘Here’s your objective.’ They saluted from halfway around the world and said, ‘Mission complete, sir.’ And that’s the way it was, and that’s the way it should have been.”

The former president however remained tight-lipped on what kind of advice he had given his son, President George W. Bush, as the latter considered whether to force Saddam from power.

“That’s the problem facing the president of the United States, not me,” he said.—AFP