Posted by andreas from p3EE3C330.dip.t-dialin.net (62.227.195.48) on Friday, September 20, 2002 at 0:52AM :
+ excerpts from a Guardian article today:
- "Bush wants to divert attention from domestic difficulties," she said. "That is a popular method. Hitler has done that before.'
- "Ms Däubler-Gmelin also claimed in an interview with the Schwabisches Tagblatt newspaper that if insider trading laws had been in force in the 1980s when President Bush was involved in the oil business "then Bush would be in prison today".
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First created :
20 September 2002 0910 hrs (SST) 0110 hrs (GMT)
Last modified :
20 September 2002 0910 hrs (SST) 0110 hrs (GMT)
US blasts Hitler-Bush comparison by a German minister
As tensions rise between the US and Germany over differences on Iraq policy, the White House has expressed outrage at a German minister's comparison of US President George W Bush to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin told a small group of labour union members on Wednesday that Mr Bush was going after Iraq to divert attention from domestic problems.
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"That's a popular method. Even Hitler did that," the German newspaper, Schwaebisches Tagblatt, quoted her as saying.
The minister called the report misleading but didn't deny the remarks.
Opposition conservatives vying to defeat Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats in Sunday's parliamentary elections called for her resignation.
Relations between Washington and Berlin have been strained since Chancellor Schroeder ruled out German participation in any military attack on Iraq with or without a new UN mandate.
Chancellor Schroeder's opposition to any military action against Iraq, even with UN backing, has struck a chord in a country still traumatized by its militaristic past.
Germany - which has sent troops to fight alongside US forces in Afghanistan - is Washington's only major Western ally to categorically reject military force against Baghdad.
As election campaigning in Germany gets fast and furious, so do Chancellor Schroeder's anti-US comments concerning Iraq, which have steadily won him points in the polls.
US Senator Jesse Helms, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the US Congress would seriously consider withdrawing US troops from Germany if Chancellor Schroeder won reelection and did not stop his "America-bashing".
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