HAMBURG, March 23: German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer warns against a series of US-led “disarmament wars” against other countries in the wake of presumed victory over Iraq, the German weekly Der Spiegel reports in its upcoming Monday edition.

In an interview with the magazine, he criticised the war on Iraq and urged European leaders to join forces as a counter-balance to US might.

Germany has been one of the strongest critics of US military action against Iraq, and Fischer’s comments now — with the ground war well underway — risk deepening the diplomatic divide.

“I cannot imagine, nor do I want to, that this is the start of a series of disarmament wars,” he told Der Spiegel.

“It should not be that at the end we have only one alternative, that either we allow a terrible danger to continue or are driven into a disarmament war.”

Fischer said that US President George Bush’s predecessor, Bill Clinton, had been able to contain North Korea’s nuclear programme via diplomatic means.

“The situation became problematic again when the new administration did not follow that course.”

North Korea and Iran are the two other members alongside Iraq in the “axis of evil” singled out by Bush early last year.

Fischer slammed the United States for ignoring the UN mood after failing to win enough support for a resolution authorizing war on Iraq.

“US power is a decisive factor for world peace and stability,” the foreign minister said.

“But a world order cannot function when the national interests of the most powerful nation are the defining criteria for the deployment of that nation’s military might.

“There must be the same rules for the big, the middle-sized and the small countries.

He said it was not only the fault of the United States but also because Europe was divided, with the likes of London and Madrid siding with Washington while Paris and Berlin, notably, fiercely opposed to war.

Pointing to history, he said being against war was not cowardly and pointed out that the United States had not suffered as Europe had done.

“The Americans have not had a Verdun on their continent,” Fischer went on, referring to one of the bloodiest battles of World War I. “There is nothing in the United States to compare with Auschwitz or Stalingrad” in World

War II.

Egypt’s apprehension: Meanwhile, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a key Arab ally of the West, said Sunday he feared the British-US war on Iraq would “drag on” after Iraqi forces put up unexpected resistance.

“When we spoke with the Americans, they said the war would be short, but what I fear is that military operations will drag on,” Mubarak told reporters in Cairo.

“We are not opposed to demonstrations. But Egyptians must realize we did all in our power to avoid a war,” the president said in the face of mounting popular criticism of Arab governments for failing to do much. —AFP