Schroeder turns to old themes for election fightback

Reuters:

Sat Aug 13, 2005 01:16 PM ET

By James Mackenzie

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder turned to the themes that won him re-election in 2002 on Saturday, rejecting U.S. military action and attacking the conservative opposition over eastern Germany.

Speaking at a rally to kick off his campaign for next month's general election, Schroeder rejected the threat of military force against Iran, just hours after U.S. President George Bush said he would consider it as a last resort to press Tehran to give up its nuclear program.

He also accused his rival Angela Merkel of weakness and another senior conservative leader of "tasteless swaggering" as the opposition struggled to contain a damaging row over comments seen as insulting to the former communist east.

The themes carried an unmistakable echo of the 2002 campaign when Schroeder came from behind for an unexpected victory thanks largely to his assured handling of a flood crisis in eastern Germany and his firm opposition to the United States over Iraq.

Referring to the comments from Bush that were broadcast on Saturday, Schroeder said Europe and the United States both wanted to ensure that Iran did not develop the capacity to make a nuclear bomb, but added: "Let's take the military option off the table. We have seen it doesn't work."

The recent spat over eastern Germany and tensions over Iran offer Schroeder a welcome respite from intractable domestic issues such as sluggish economic growth, near-record unemployment and deeply unpopular welfare cuts.

Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) still hold a 13 point lead over Schroeder's SPD, according to recent polls, but the lead has been slipping after a series of conservative mishaps.

Strong support in the east for the Left Party, an alliance of former communists and ex-SPD members, has created a bloc that threatens to prevent Merkel from forming a majority of her own and could force a so-called "grand coalition" with the SPD.

"TASTELESS"

The east has thus become one of the election's key battlegrounds, making recent comments by conservative Bavarian state premier Edmund Stoiber all the more damaging.

Stoiber provoked a storm of criticism last week after he was reported to have said it should not be for the "frustrated" of eastern Germany to decide the upcoming election. He says his comments were directed at the Left Party, not east Germans. But Schroeder used the 44th anniversary of the start of building work on the Berlin Wall to step up his attacks.

"The tastelessness and insults to the Germans in the new states expressed by Mr Stoiber must be rejected as sharply and decisively as possible, on this day above all," Schroeder told an election rally in his home town of Hanover.

"Tasteless swaggering from Mr Stoiber and lack of leadership from Mrs Merkel are not going to bring this country together."

Stoiber's comments, which have dominated headlines in German newspapers, have struck a very raw nerve in a region lagging far behind more prosperous western states like Bavaria 15 years after reunification.

Conservative strategists are increasingly worried that the remarks and several others of a similar tenor by Stoiber that have been reported in the media could ruin what only a few weeks ago appeared to be a certain victory for Merkel.

"Not everything that has been said in recent days has been helpful," CDU general secretary Volker Kauder told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.