February 4, 2003	Tuesday	Zul Hijjah 2,1423

BERLIN: Good friends should be able to agree to disagree, says German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. But the deepening rift between Berlin and Washington over Iraq is no playground tiff and risks turning into a lasting estrangement.

With politicians trading spiteful barbs, commentators see rising public hostility towards US policy on issues ranging from Iraq to the environment to human rights that could undermine a loyal friendship built up after World War Two.

Relations have been frosty between the two capitals since Schroeder made opposition to any US-led war with Iraq a key plank of his re-election campaign last September. He has revved up his rhetoric again of late at rallies for two regional elections.

US officials have hit back, describing ties as “poisoned” after a German minister was quoted comparing US President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler for using war to distract from domestic woes and a leading Social Democrat said Bush was acting like a Roman emperor.

“For decades Germany had an aura of absolute reliability in America,” Ronald Asmus from the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington told the Handelsblatt business daily. “With his Iraq rhetoric in the election campaign, Schroeder opened a Pandora’s box of latent anti-Bushism and anti-Americanism.”

US politicians have not exactly helped cool tempers. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld publicly snubbed his German counterpart Peter Struck at a NATO summit in November and bluntly advised the Germans: “When in a hole, stop digging”.

Rumsfeld’s dismissal of Germany and France as “Old Europe” last month for their reticence over war provoked the biggest eruption of rage, with even usually pro-American German politicians and newspapers saying he had gone too far.

UNGRATEFUL GERMANS?: US commentators have hit back, accusing Germany of ingratitude for American help rebuilding the country after World War Two and US support for unification in 1990 after decades of military protection for West Germany through the Cold War.

Some officials in Washington have even suggested shifting some of the 70,000 US forces based in Germany to Poland to punish Berlin for its impudence in opposing a war in Iraq.

Business leaders have said that the row could hurt trade with the United States, which buys 10 per cent of German exports. A poll in December showed that 38 per cent of Germans from the former Communist east favoured a counter-balance to US supremacy, the highest rate in Europe, while only 25 per cent of western Germans shared that view, the lowest rate in Europe.

But the survey of 44 countries, conducted by US pollsters, the Pew Research Centre, showed that — while still high by global standards — the number of Germans with a positive image of the United States has fallen by 20 per cent since 1999.

BLOOD FOR OIL?: While many Germans dispute that opposition to war or criticism of Bush should be equated with anti-Americanism, there is clearly a growing transatlantic values gap over questions ranging from ecology to global inequality to the death penalty. Polls show a majority of Germans believe the main motive for a war with Iraq is oil rather than Baghdad’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, a view reinforced by a cover story last month in the respected Der Spiegel weekly entitled “Blood for Oil”.

“Low energy bulbs for the United States, instead of bombs for Iraq,” read one placard at an anti-war protest in Berlin.

WHO IS THE THREAT?: Yet some of Germany’s avowed Atlanticists are fighting back for America. Christian Democrat former Chancellor Helmut Kohl has accused Schroeder of using anti-American slogans to win votes, saying Germany will have to pay a long-term price.

“It is unacceptable that some people in Germany act as if it was the Americans that posed the danger and deny the threat of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship,” Kohl told Die Welt daily.

Michel Friedman, deputy leader of Germany’s Jewish community and a prominent Christian Democrat, is worried that mounting resentment of the United States is creating an unholy alliance between former Communists, Greens and even far-right groups.

Wrapped in a rainbow flag at an anti-war sit-in outside the German defence ministry in sub-zero temperatures, Jan Sievers, a 22-year-old software engineering student, defended the right of Germans to criticise US policy on Iraq.

“It is unbelievable what Bush and his gang are up to. We have to stop it. Even people who don’t usually demonstrate like my parents are taking to the streets,” Sievers said.—Reuters