[PEN-L:6558] (Fwd) 'CHANCELLOR OF WAR' FACES TIDE OF DISSENT - The Times (

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Subject:                'CHANCELLOR OF WAR' FACES TIDE OF DISSENT - The Times
        (London), May 4

The Times (London)                                                      May 4, 1999

'CHANCELLOR OF WAR' FACES TIDE OF DISSENT

        Former Finance Minister launches scathing attack on NATO campaign

        By Roger Boyes, Inside Germany

        The tide of German opinion is shifting rapidly against the 
NATO war in Yugoslavia. Popular opponents have found a voice in 
the form of Oskar Lafontaine, the former Finance Minister, who at 
the weekend relaunched his political career with a scathing attack 
on the NATO campaign.
        "We are stuck in a dead-end street," Herr Lafontaine told a May 
Day rally. "More and more innocent people are becoming victims of 
this bombing. I urge those responsible to work towards ending the 
bombing, to return to the negotiating table." Before the speech, 
Herr Lafontaine was urged by nervous Social Democratic 
colleagues to curb any direct attack on Gerhard Schroeder, the 
Chancellor. Yet the target was clear; Herr Lafontaine, former 
Social Democratic chairman, is convinced that he can feel the pulse 
of his party better than anyone.
        "Oskar," said a friend of the difficult, often edgy Saarlander, 
"regards it as his duty to alert the Chancellor to the public 
discontent about the war." Herr Lafontaine could well be reading 
the mood correctly. The May Day rallies were one useful pointer. 
Rudolf Scharping, Defence Minister, hailed by the media, was 
greeted with chants of "Killer, killer". At the Lafontaine rally, 
somebody hoisted a placard showing Herr Schroeder as Adolf 
Hitler. A section of the crowd shouted abuse at the "war 
Chancellor". Every trade union speaker at the weekend urged 
NATO to stop the bombing. In eastern Germany - where 
opposition is strongest - the Social Democratic prime minster of 
Brandenburg, Manfred Stolpe, won loud applause when he 
shouted: "Put an end to this bombardment." Even the Green 
Environment Minister, far from happy with German involvement in 
the war, was pelted with eggs. 
        These protests were more than just ritualised left-wing 
grumbling. The Government is a Social Democrat-Green coalition. 
The demonstrators make up the Government's basic constituency. 
Their demands go beyond stopping the war. They want a 
commitment that Germany will not put itself on a collision course 
with Russia, and guarantees that Germany will not be flooded by 
refugees.
        Growing legions of German critics accept the Serb propaganda 
that Kosovans are fleeing NATO bombs rather than ethnic 
cleansers. The Forsa Opinion Poll Institute shows 52 per cent now 
favour an immediate unilateral interruption of the NATO campaign. 
"The consensus machine is beginning to break down," says Ernst-
Otto Czempiel, politics professor.
        Modern German politicians have no experience of sustaining 
support for a long war. They have already deployed the familiar 
techniques to mobilise public opinion - pictures of massacres, 
accusations of Serb concentration camps - and are quick to remind 
Germans that their post-Holocaust moral obligation is to act against 
injustice rather than stand aside. But these devices are no longer 
working. Germans have stopped believing in a meaningful victory 
on the battlefield. They are looking for a speedy diplomatic face-
saver. The release of three US soldiers appeared to open the way 
for some new thinking about postwar political and economic 
reconstruction of the Balkans - a campaign, they believe, that can 
be won. 
        Germany is on the margins of the military offensive. In the 
postwar climate, it can take the lead with America on a Marshall-
style aid package, financial support for democratic governments 
and backing for a European Union-backed stabilisation plan. 
Germany does not have the patience to wait for a natural military 
turning point: it wants reconstruction now. This tension between 
fidelity to the Alliance's military and political aims and erosion of 
domestic support for military action make Bonn look like a mansion 
with dry rot.
        The Government has reached its psychological limit; it could 
not take part in a ground-troop offensive or even a policing action. 
Nor would Germans willingly agree to an escalation of airstrikes.