Kohl takes foreign policy helm

Kohl takes foreign policy helm

By Leon Mangasarian

BONN (DPA): German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who began a trip to
Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan last Saturday, is being
accompanied by three of his ministers but markedly not by Foreign
Minister Klaus Kinkel.

The reason for Kinkel's absence is not just the fact that
Kohl's Asia trip -- his 11th visit to the region since becoming
chancellor -- is mainly aimed at boosting trade.

Under Kinkel's tenure the foreign ministry is increasingly
being ignored in Bonn while Chancellor Kohl and a coterie of
other top ministers expand their control over most of the
ministry's key policy areas.

"German foreign policy is increasingly being made in Kohl's
chancellery while the foreign ministry is standing outside the
door," commented the Bild daily, which has close links to Kohl.

It has been a downhill slide for Kinkel ever since he replaced
the wily Hans-Dietrich Genscher as German foreign minister in
1992.

In an unprecedented humiliation the hapless Kinkel was last
year forced by the government dominated parliament to cancel an
invitation to his Iranian counterpart for a Bonn conference on
Islam.

Earlier this year he suffered the indignity of having his
planned visit to China canceled by Beijing due to a row over
Tibet. Amid accusations in the German media of a kowtow, Kinkel
finally made his trip to China last week.

The weakness of his Free Democratic Party (FDP), which serves
as junior coalition partner in Kohl's center-right government,
has also undermined Kinkel's authority.

After a series of regional FDP election disasters Kinkel
resigned as party leader in 1995.

Kinkel's low reputation is increasingly being noticed abroad.

As The Times in London recently commented: "At best he is a
kind of Tonto to Herr Kohl's Lone Ranger; at worst he is an
irrelevance."

With the eclipse of Kinkel, Chancellor Kohl - who has been in
office for 14 years - and key members of his inner circle are now
responsible for the major aspects of German foreign policy.

The Chancellor has made all elements of the European Union -
the single currency, expansion and institutional reform - into
his personal domain.

Kohl is aided by his influential foreign affairs advisor,
Joachim Bitterlich, who has been dubbed "Germany's secret foreign
minister".

Kohl further dominates foreign policy by maintaining close
personal ties with most major world leaders via regular telephone
calls.

Meanwhile, Kohl's globe-trotting intelligence services
coordinator, Bernd Schmidbauer, has been able to maintain far
better ties with countries like Iran than has Kinkel.

It was Schmidbauer - not the German Foreign Ministry - who
earlier this year went to Teheran and arranged an exchange of
Hezbollah prisoners held in Israel for the bodies of missing
Israeli soldiers.

Outside the chancellery Defense Minister Volker Ruehe, a
member of Kohl's Christian Democrats (CDU), has expanded his
influence over defense and security policy and is the key backer
in Bonn of expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Ruehe does not hesitate to contradict Kinkel. Last year he
publicly upbraided the foreign minister for making remarks about
a German contribution to peacekeeping forces to former
Yugoslavia.

When it comes to long-range thinking about where German
foreign policy is headed the foreign ministry also appears absent
from high-level debate.

Karl Lamers, a CDU foreign policy expert, produces regular
think papers which play a far bigger role in directing the
discussion than anything emerging from Kinkel's office.

The decline of Kinkel should in no way imply the German
Foreign Ministry is poorly staffed.

Although deeply frustrated, some of Bonn's best and brightest
can be found in the foreign ministry complex perched above the
Rhine River.

The news weekly Der Spiegel explained the situation this way:
"Kinkel has excellent advisors - he just doesn't listen to them."