0
BERLIN: Chancellor Angela Merkel is trying to defuse criticism of Germany's current course from longtime leader and conservative icon Helmut Kohl, which comes at an awkward time for her as she faces difficult policy challenges at home and abroad.
Kohl, a member of Merkel's Christian Democrats and the chancellor's one-time mentor, said in an interview published this week: ''I ask myself where Germany stands today and where it wants to go.''
Kohl's rare and unusually blunt intervention was widely seen as criticism of Merkel, though he didn't specifically name the chancellor or her government.
This year, many conservatives have been unsettled by Merkel's abrupt decision to speed up Germany's exit from nuclear energy, only months after she pushed through an extension of German reactors' lifespan; and by Germany's abstention in a UN vote on the no-fly zone over Libya, which its traditional western allies supported.
Merkel is currently trying to rally parliamentary support for a vote next month on the latest round of eurozone rescue measures, which are not popular with supporters.
Party traditionalists also dislike plans to shake up Germany's multilayered school system.
Poll ratings for her fractious center-right coalition are poor, and it has performed badly in several state elections this year.
Merkel told Thursday's edition of the Bild daily that the services of Kohl to German and European unity can't be overestimated. Kohl was chancellor from 1982 to 1998 and presided over German reunification.
However, ''every time has its specific challenges,'' she added. The current government, she said, ''is working resolutely, together with our partners in Europe and the world, to master the challenges of our time.''
In his interview with the journal Internationale Politik, published Wednesday, the 81-year-old Kohl asserted that ''Germany has for some years no longer been predictable at home or abroad.''
Kohl noted that President Barack Obama visited neighbors France and Poland, but not Germany, during a trip to Europe in May.
''After everything that Germans and Americans have experienced and lived through together and that links us deeply to this day, I would never have let myself dream that a serving American president would come to Europe and fly over the federal republic of Germany," he was quoted as saying.
''We must take care not to gamble everything away,'' he added.
''We must urgently return to our old reliability. We must make clear again, so that others can see it, where we stand and where we want to go; that we know where we belong.''
Kohl's comments on the eurozone debt crisis were perhaps more helpful to Merkel- coming even as current President Christian Wulff, another Christian Democrat, on Wednesday criticized Europe's crisis management.
Kohl acknowledged that mistakes were made in the past, but said there was no alternative to helping out troubled countries -something that has caused increasing indigestion among others on the center-right over recent months.
''It doesn't help to lament and it certainly doesn't help to talk the euro down,'' Kohl said.
Merkel is working to rally her coalition behind expanded powers for the eurozone's (euro) 440 billion ($634 billion) rescue fund and a second rescue package for Greece.
