German Press Review: Schröder in Moscow

Commenting on the two-day summit of German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Yekaterinenburg, the Ostsee Zeitung in Rostock claims that the two leaders have "come to understand each others’ value." And this is not only true on a political level, the paper wrote, but also when it comes to economics, as the huge Russian market is highly attractive for Germany. And it concludes: The fact that bilateral sales between the two countries have grown 80 percent since 1999 gives a "glimmer of hope" to Germany’s crisis-shaken economy.

The Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, published in the eastern city of Halle, offered a more critical perspective of the demonstration of unity between the two leaders. "According to the German chancellor the relationship to Putin could ‘hardly be improved.’ Will this become a repetition of friendship modeled after that of Helmut Kohl and Boris Jelzin?" the paper’s editors asked, before questioning why Schröder has advanced the relationship despite the fact that the democratization of Russia is not keeping pace with the western course of Putin’s foreign policy.

The editors of the Berliner Zeitung in the German capital, meanwhile, pointed out that it’s not world politics that are being determined at the Schröder-Putin summit. "Schröder and Putin may agree on the role of the United Nations in Iraq," the paper wrote, but that won’t change anything. "It will not strengthen their influence in this question, because it is still the United States which has the last say in Iraq." The paper further commented that, despite the differences over the war in Iraq, Putin has a surprisingly good relationship with U.S. President George W. Bush. "Bush may no longer see Russia as the most eastern edge of the old Europe, but as a center of the new one," the paper concluded.

Other papers commented on German Defense Minister Peter Struck’s demand that the decision process needed to send German troops abroad be accelerated. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung observed that, for quite some time, Struck has been searching for ways to deploy troops without risking the vote in parliament. The paper suggested that was the result of bad experiences in the past. Germany’s coalition government of Social Democrats and Greens nearly collapsed twice over the question of deploying troops. The paper also claimed that "most responsible politicians in Berlin are conscious of the fact that decisions about interventions that sometimes have to be decided within hours cannot be treated as normal business in the German parliament."

Cologne’s Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger disagreed, demanding that the current system for approving foreign troop deployments not be changed. "Experience shows that, up till now, urgent decisions about deploying troops haven’t been necessary, and they probably won’t be necessary either in the future." The paper added "the crises of this world are not bolts out of the blue." And if there really was the need for an urgent decision, it continued, parliament could call a special session.