Posted on 04/04/2003 7:30:31 AM PST by kattracks
Schroeder softens anti-war tone, sees U.S. victory
By Erik Kirschbaum
BERLIN, April 4 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said for the first time on Friday he hoped for a quick victory by U.S.-led forces in Iraq, although images of the war convinced him he had been right to oppose military action.
Appearing to soften his earlier anti-war language that caused tensions with the United States and Britain, Schroeder said he hoped the U.S and British forces would win the day.
"One cannot wish for anything else. Even if one was against the war, one has to wish it ends as quickly as possible," Schroeder said in the interview on Friday with ZDF television. "That has to be the wish of every reasonable person.
"Obviously it will end with a victory for the allies because of their relative strength," Schroeder said, whose spokesman caused a stir earlier this week by pointedly avoiding any prediction of the outcome.
But the chancellor stressed that he and his government remained opposed to the war.
Schroeder, whose soldier father was killed in World War Two, said the television images and photographs of casualties in the Iraq war nevertheless reinforced his view the war was a mistake.
"The many pictures, especially of the victims, only strengthen me in my opinion that it was right to try to prevent this war, even if we did not succeed," he said.
More than six million Germans, including two million civilians, were killed in World War Two, which began when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939.
CLOSE RELATIONSHIP WITH U.S.
The chancellor, one of the loudest critics of any military action against Iraq, said Germany was, and would remain, a close ally of the United States and Britain.
"We have a firm basis with the United States," he said. "Independent of our differing views on the war, we are close partners in an alliance."
Schroeder said he was ready to talk to U.S. President George W. Bush.
Schroeder's fence-mending efforts followed comments earlier on Friday by Defence Minister Peter Struck, who told Germans they shouldn't forget that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had suppressed Iraqi people and may have weapons of mass destruction.
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said earlier this week he hoped the Iraqi government would fall as quickly as possible.
Political analysts said even though Schroeder and Fischer still oppose the war, their latest comments marked a distinct and deliberate shift in tone in favour of the U.S.-led war.
"It's an attempt on the one hand to improve German-American relations and on the other to regain some room for manoeuvre in foreign policy," said Frank Umbach, security analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations think-tank.
(Additional reporting by David Crossland in Berlin)
04/04/03 10:20 ET
Really??
And if the Allies had not fought back none of these people would have died.
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