Posted on 09/22/2002 12:15:12 PM PDT by HAL9000
BERLIN, Sep 22, 2002 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Germany's justice minister, under fire for reportedly comparing U.S. President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler, won't keep her Cabinet post if Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder heads the next administration, a government official said Sunday.The reported comparison has drawn ire from Washington, and Schroeder tried to ease tensions with a conciliatory letter to Bush on Friday saying Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin had assured him she never made the reported statement comparing Bush to Hitler for threatening war to distract from domestic problems.
Although Schroeder resisted calls to force her resignation, the chancellor does not want to include her in a new government, the official said on condition of anonymity.
While the minister's future remained unclear, leaders of the liberal opposition Free Democrats unanimously demanded their deputy leader resign after he angered them by renewing attacks on a prominent German Jewish leader.
"The debate of the past week has done us massive damage," the Free Democrats' leader, Guido Westerwelle, told ZDF television after polls closed and early returns showed disappointing results for the party.
Daeubler-Gmelin, meanwhile, rejected as "malicious rumors" a report in the mass-circulation Bild daily that she had decided to step down after polls closed amid growing pressure from within her party, Schroeder's Social Democrats.
The furor erupted after a regional newspaper, the Schwaebisches Tagblatt, reported Thursday that Daeubler-Gmelin told a labor union meeting: "Bush wants to distract attention from his domestic problems. That's a popular method. Even Hitler did that."
On Friday, Daeubler-Gmelin gave a different version. She said during a chaotic discussion that touched on Iraq, she had referred to diversionary tactics and had used the words "we know that from our history, since Adolf Nazi." But she denied saying the name Hitler.
In a campaign already overshadowed by tension with the United States over Schroeder's emphatic opposition to American military action to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Washington responded to the reported remarks with dismay and disappointment at one of its strongest allies.
In comments published Saturday in The Financial Times newspaper, Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was quoted as saying that the alleged remarks created a "poisoned" atmosphere.
"There have clearly been some things said that are way beyond the pale," Rice said. "The reported statements ... even if half of what was reported was said, are simply unacceptable."
Schroeder's conservative challenger, Edmund Stoiber, has accused Schroeder of damaging U.S.-German relations with his stance on Iraq and called for Daeubler-Gmelin's immediate removal.
Schroeder sought to defuse tensions in a conciliatory letter to the U.S. president sent Friday.
"The minister has assured me that she never made the remarks attributed to her," Schroeder said in the letter. "She has said this publicly, as well."
Schroeder also wrote that he would not allow anyone to remain in his Cabinet who compared an American president to a criminal.
As Schroeder tried to contain that row, the Free Democrats stepped up their isolation of Moellemann after leaders refused to appear with him at rallies in the final days of the campaign, before calling for his resignation Sunday.
Moellemann's colleagues were infuriated by his renewal last week of attacks on prominent German Jewish leader Michel Friedman, who has clashed with Moellemann over the latter's strident criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Moellemann called the party's request for his resignation his "bitterest hour" but did not immediately say whether he would quit.
Copyright 2002 Associated Press, All rights reserved
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