GERMAN LEADER TO OPPOSE SENDING NATO TROOPS TO IRAQ

 Informe de  RICHARD BERNSTEIN and MARK LANDLER en “The New York Times” del 21/05/2004

 Por su interés y relevancia, he seleccionado el informe que sigue para incluirlo en este sitio web. (L. B.-B.)

BERLIN, May 19 - Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, seeking to head off any attempt to use NATO forces in Iraq, said Wednesday that he would speak clearly against any such move at NATO summit meeting in Istanbul next month.

In an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, Mr. Schröder said Germany would not go so far as to block a NATO role in Iraq if a majority of the organization's members wanted it. But he added, "The problem will be that NATO would find itself in the same situation as the coalition forces are in now with regard to the confidence that the Iraqis have in these forces as guarantors of security and stability."

"I would be very grateful," Mr. Schröder said, "if people would understand my doubts as to whether NATO really can play such a positive role as they seem to think and will make no secret of these doubts in Istanbul."

Still, Mr. Schröder said a broad agreement had emerged on the future steps to be taken in Iraq, including the transfer of authority to an interim Iraqi government on June 30 and a United Nations resolution recognizing that government.

"Both France and Germany as well as other European countries are much closer to the coalition than some people think," Mr. Schröder said in an hourlong interview in his Berlin office.

"This Iraqi transitional government must have a say in things; it must not just exist on paper," he said. "It must have powers and not just be seen as a political adjunct of the coalition forces."

Mr. Schröder was relaxed and good-humored as he sat at a conference table in his airy, modern office on the seventh floor of the federal chancellery. The office offers a commanding view of Berlin, with the glass-domed Parliament building visible across a grassy esplanade on one side and the Tiergarten, the verdant park in the center of the city, on the other.

On June 6, Mr. Schröder will stand alongside President Bush and other leaders on the beaches of Normandy as the first German chancellor to attend festivities celebrating the D-Day landings of World War II. Reflecting what has become the prevailing view in Germany, he said that the event was not the celebration of a German defeat but of a liberation for all of Europe, including Germany.

"For me, D-Day was the beginning of the liberation of Europe from National Socialism," he said.

Twenty years ago, on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, Mr. Schröder's predecessor, Helmut Kohl, was not invited to Normandy. At the time, Mr. Kohl said, "There is no point for a German chancellor to celebrate an event in which thousands of German soldiers were miserably killed." The invitation to Mr. Schröder was issued by the French president, Jacques Chirac, and is widely perceived as a sort of culminating gesture, after three major wars in less than a century, of the long process of French-German reconciliation.

"Of course I was very moved by the invitation," said Mr. Schröder, whose father, a 21 year-old corporal, was killed during the war.

"I never knew him, but I still know who started the war, and that is why I took it upon myself to accept this invitation," Mr. Schröder said. He added that for a German chancellor to be present at the D-Day ceremonies was "a sign of recognition of the role of Germany, of postwar Germany, as an established democracy and as a part of the Western community of values."

Germany has sought to balance its strong opposition to the Iraqi war with an effort to affirm its overall cooperation with the United States, and in his interview on Wednesday, Mr. Schröder stressed that cooperation. He talked about the substantial German role in Afghanistan, where Germany has roughly 2,000 troops in the NATO security force, and avoided criticizing the United States even in the wake of the Iraqi prison abuse scandal.

"The dispute over the basic position, which escalated to such an extent last year, is now a part of recent history," Mr. Schröder said. "And now the American president and I have decided that this is not the time for historical reappraisals. It is time for deciding where our joint responsibility lies."

Asked what those joint responsibilities were, Mr. Schröder spoke of the training of the Iraqi police by Germany at a camp in the United Arab Emirates and Germany's willingness to forgive a substantial part of Iraq's debt, but he reiterated his refusal to send troops to Iraq.

"I personally do not desire this," he continued, "and I wouldn't have any support for it in Germany, no legitimacy for such a step, regardless of whether I myself wanted it or not."

Even in connection with the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Mr. Schröder seemed eager to find a silver lining, saying that, while the reputation of the United States had certainly been tarnished, the response of American society showed the vigor and strength of American democracy.

Mr. Schröder said that when the accusations were first raised, he watched the Senate testimony of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld on CNN.

"I was really impressed by the toughness and intensity of the investigation that was immediately set in motion," Mr. Schröder said, "and that shows how great the power of American democracy is."

At a time of rising anti-Americanism in Europe, Mr. Schröder said that it was the task of those who criticized the Iraq war "to point to this other aspect," namely the strength of the American democracy, in order, he said, "to minimize the damage that has occurred."

"And the second conclusion to be drawn," he said, "is that multilateralism offers a measure of protection even to the strongest and is therefore better than unilateralism."

Basic questions about the role Germany should play in world affairs are being asked both inside and outside Germany today. Analysts have wondered whether the disagreement over Iraq presaged a permanent drifting away from the country's previously powerful ties with the United States, with Germany becoming more and more oriented toward the European Union. It is an idea that Mr. Schröder rejects.

"I don't think it's right to assume that there are divergent interests between the United States of America on the one hand and Europe on the other," he said. "As Europe expands and deepens as a result of the integration process," he continued, "its unity will become increasingly apparent in issues of foreign and defense policy, and this united Europe must be a partner of the United States, a partner of equal standing. And when I say partner, I mean partner, not counterweight."