Europe considers its alliances

As the US and its "Old Europe" allies try to overcome their differences over Iraq, Europe is also examining its internal rifts laid open by the Iraq war.

While differences remain over how to rebuild Iraq and the role the United Nations should play in that process, Germany, which, along with France, sought to block US war plans at the UN Security Council, appears to be retreating from the idea that Europe could become a rival in world politics and a challenge to American hegemony.

The shift in emphasis indicates that France's efforts to drive a wedge between Europe and the US have failed - and that European countries such as Britain, Spain and Poland, which called for a cooperative European alliance with the US, have won the upper hand.

Highlighting the shift in US alliances in Europe, Poland is emerging as a broker between European states that favor a close alliance with the US and countries like France that seek to contain US influence in European affairs. By doing so, Poland, which backed the US war effort, has sought to assume a role that was previously reserved for Germany.

But there are signs that Germany wants to regain that role.

In advance of a meeting Friday with Secretary of State Colin Powell, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who had staked his reelection bid on opposition to the Iraq war, has adopted conciliatory language aimed at assuring Washington that Berlin remains a key US ally.

Schröder used an event on Friday marking the 100th anniversary of the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany to emphasize the deep ties shared between Germany and the US, which he said were "bound by a really vital friendship."

"This friendship is founded on a solid basis of common experience and common values," he said. Debating whether the post-cold-war world should be unipolar - an expression indicating domination by the US - or multipolar is "hardly productive," he said. "We really all agree that we want to have only one pole in world politics: the pole of freedom, peace, and justice," he said.

During their meeting on Friday, Powell and Schröder will discuss the situation in Iraq and the peace process in the Middle East. Schröder is also expected to discuss specific measures to rebuild ties between Berlin and Washington. His aides have been working to set up a meeting between President Bush and Schröder when the two men attend ceremonies marking St. Petersburg's 300th birthday May 31. The Germans would like there to be some public demonstration of reconciliation between the two men.

But even senior members of Schröder's own party suggest that the relationship between Schröder and Bush is "kaput."

Hans Ulrich Klose, deputy chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the German parliament, said the White House - and even Bush's critics - are still fuming over a comparison by Schröder's former justice minister of Bush's Iraq policy with the foreign policy of Adolf Hitler. Schröder reprimanded the minister, but left her in office until the election in September. After the election, she was made chairman of a parliamentary committee.

"No one in the US - not even critics of the president - understands this. Does the chancellor?" said Klose.

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