Dual resignations reveal Schroeder's vulnerability

By Mark John and Douglas Busvine

BERLIN (Reuters): The twin resignations of Germany's health and farm ministers on Tuesday showed again how ruthlessly Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder can act when members of his cabinet team become liabilities.

The departures of Health Minister Andrea Fischer and Agriculture Minister Karl-Heinz Funke brought the number of cabinet resignations to six in two years.

None of them was fired, but the cumulative effect of their departures has raised questions over Schroeder's team selection.

And to add to his woes, three senior and popular members of his center-left coalition also have problems of their own.

On Tuesday Funke, of Schroeder's Social Democrat party, and Fischer, of his coalition partner the Greens, paid the price for plunging from complacent denial into panic over the dangers of mad cow disease.

Their departure followed a pattern of earlier resignations in which ministers who have come under heavy media fire have been left to fall on their swords by Schroeder, who has thus avoided the upheaval of a major cabinet reshuffle and emerged with his popularity largely unscathed.

First there was Oskar Lafontaine, the left-wing finance minister who threw in the towel after just five months in office after losing a power struggle with Schroeder.

Chief of staff Bodo Hombach was found a job in Brussels -- he leads EU policy on the Balkans -- after one question too many about how he found the money for his luxury home. Transport Minister Reinhard Klimmt went in November after charity funds were diverted to a soccer club of which he was president.

Only Culture Minister Michael Naumann, not a career politician, was fortunate enough to quit while the going was good, returning before Christmas to the publishing industry he had left to join government in 1998.

Moreover, the cabinet stars who frequently rank alongside Schroeder as Germany's most popular politicians -- Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, Finance Minister Hans Eichel and Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping -- are also under fire.

A mixture of personal and political upsets has suddenly made the triumvirate look unusually vulnerable.

"They are the prestige figures in (Schroeder's) cabinet," noted the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

"Now, overnight, each one of his three strong men has got into difficulties," it observed after a series of public relations glitches which coalition sources say have got Schroeder fuming.

Eichel, self-styled "cutback commissar" who achieved the considerable feat of convincing Germans that spending cuts are good for them, faces persistent accusations he has used the country's air force as a kind of personal taxi service.

Despite his insistence that all his flights are job-related, rival deputies say the diary evidence he has made available so far is ridden with suspicious-looking holes and want to haul him up before parliament to explain himself.

Scharping, a stalwart of Schroeder's Social Democrats who has chancellor ambitions of his own, faces accusations of laxity in reacting to the "Balkan Syndrome" scare over soldiers exposed to depleted uranium in NATO munitions.

The defense minister belatedly broke his silence on Sunday evening on the matter after a week of growing concern about the risks to German soldiers -- well after Schroeder himself, on a private weekend visit to Russia, had voiced his alarm.

But most waves were caused by last week's confession by Joschka Fischer, Schroeder's vice-chancellor and a moderate leader of the Greens, that he was a street-fighting agitator in 1970s student riots.

Grainy photographs showing Fischer and a cluster of friends beating up a police officer on the streets of Frankfurt in 1973 sparked questions even among some sympathizers and inevitably the first tentative calls for his resignation.

So far, the fall-out has been limited. No German soldier has yet been confirmed to have been made ill by exposure to uranium munitions and nothing untoward has been pinned on Eichel.

While Schroeder backs all three -- and has even said Joschka Fischer's confession deserves "respect" -- party sources say he is all too aware that his government's unprecedentedly strong mid-term ratings could be at stake.

"The lackadaisical approach of his ministers simply beggars belief," said one senior SPD parliamentarian.

"The chancellor is not amused."

Nor should he be. Added to the mad cow scare, it all adds up to a less than spotless record just 10 weeks before two important regional elections in the western states of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate.

"We have to see exactly how voters register all this," said Oliver Krieg of pollsters Emnid. "But it could certainly taint Schroeder's image."

Analysts point out that sacking a minister in a German coalition government is hard because it means finding an acceptable replacement in a cabinet where portfolios have been shared out along party lines.

Firing someone with the popularity of Foreign Minister Fischer -- whose personal approval rating outstrips even Schroeder's own -- would, however, be another matter.

"We reckon 80 percent of people want Fischer to stay," said Manfred Guellner of pollsters Forsa, saying that was only likely to change if charges of being involved in more serious violence were leveled against him.