Schroeder and Fischer vie to control foreign policy

By Nikolaus Blume

BERLIN (DPA): The tension between Germany's chancellor's office and its foreign ministry spawned by a recent serious breach of protocol comes right in the middle of a creeping redistribution of foreign policy clout between Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

The incident and its resulting tensions have caused an explosive, atmosphere in high government circles and explains the extraordinary effort to close ranks within the government leadership.

The timing is bad for a public quarrel between the leaders or their offices. "Right now neither side wants to embarrass itself," said a highly-placed source in the foreign ministry, where officials have certainly noticed that Schroeder has been staking out ever-bigger claims in the foreign policy field and wants to score some points there.

Schroeder's office still has not come to the point reached by former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, under whose government some really delicate information only leaked through slowly to the foreign ministry officials who were really responsible for the areas concerned. Kohl's office came to control matters so tightly that government insiders often poked fun at then Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel by calling him "Klaus the Outsider."

When Schroeder's Social Democrat-Greens government took office, the cooperation with the foreign ministry improved markedly, high-ranking diplomats have said gratefully. Schroeder shied away from pursuing his own personal foreign policy, they said, and tended to include all the ministries whose areas of responsibility might be affected by whatever matter was at hand -- especially Fischer's foreign ministry.

Early on in his term of office, Schroeder gave Fischer practically a free hand to set his own foreign policy tone. At first, the Chancellor tended to intervene just every now and again, often enough to harvest some occasional public-relations hay on high-profile items. Fischer took the chance to build up his public image. During the Kosovo campaign, his name became synonymous with the hurriedly cobbled-together blueprint for a long-term pacification of the Balkans -- Fischer's "stability pact" for the Balkans, it was called.

Later, after discussing it informally with Schroeder, Fischer scored another big success and made headlines again all across the continent with a speech outlining his vision for the future of the European Union. Though he had developed his idea in his role as a private citizen and not as a German government official, internationally his speech was taken as the official position of the German government.

The chancellor's office usually ends up getting the blame for German foreign policy botches, on the other hand. That happened during the failed attempt to install Germany's finance ministry undersecretary Caio Koch-Weser as head of the International Monetary Fund.

Schroeder's office even ended up taking the blame for the similarly unsuccessful effort to ostracize Austria after the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPOe) gained a foothold in the country's governing coalition, at least in public opinion. Fischer's diplomatic corps, on the other hand, had at least some success at planting the idea that Schroeder's adviser, Michael Steiner, had been the driving force behind the high profile, anti-FPOe effort, an effort that ended with an embarrassing whimper instead of a success.

In the last six months, the balance of foreign policy power within the German government has been shifting. At the EU's recent summit meeting in Nice, France, Schroeder came across as polished and successful, gathering praise from all sides. He outplayed Fischer on his own home turf -- European policy.

Schroeder's decision to put his name on a brief but far- reaching passage on the subject of Europe in his Social Democratic Party's future platform marked another step in that direction. In just a few dry sentences, Schroeder triggered a Europe-wide debate that will certainly end up involving almost all the continent's heads of state and of government -- in some cases, against their will.

Fischer, on the other hand, kept a significant distance between himself and his government boss in several areas. While that may not mean that the two have split publicly on the direction German foreign policy should follow, the long-simmering rivalry between them has finally boiled to the surface.