- Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has said a call from
his Green Party coalition allies for German troops to join any United Nations
force in Iraq made him "want to puke".
-
- Mr Schröder, who was re-elected on the strength
of his opposition to the Iraq war, has consistently ruled out such a move.
-
- He used the phrase in a private meeting with MPs of his
Social Democratic Party (SPD), adding that the Greens should stop acting
as if they were both part of the ruling coalition and an opposition party.
-
- The comments were widely reported in Germany yesterday,
only days after Mr Schröder and his Green vice-chancellor, Joschka
Fischer, said they would fight the 2006 general election as a team.
-
- Both parties attempted to play down the remarks. Bela
Anda, the government spokesman, refused to confirm or deny what Mr Schröder
had said.
-
- But the SPD's parliamentary party head, Franz Muntefering,
said there were "voices which were a bit strange" among the Greens
and that the chancellor had only been reflecting wider SPD opinion.
-
- Mr Fischer said: "I never comment on cabinet colleagues
in public, and certainly not the chancellor."
-
- Angelika Beer, the Green Party politician whose comments
first enraged the chancellor, has since backtracked, ruling out any kind
of German military involvement in Iraq "at the moment".
-
-
- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2003.
|