When asked by a reporter at a joint news conference with visiting South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun what Asia could learn from Germany in terms of dealing with history, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder referred to his country's own experience.
"With a sensitive and self-critical manner of dealing with your own history you will not lose friends but rather win them," he said on Wednesday.
"Every country must find its own way to deal with the good sides as well as the darker sides of its history," said Schroeder.
Germany has won trust from the countries that suffered Nazi crimes during World War II, and earlier this week, while participating in the commemoration of a concentration camp's liberation in Weimar, Schroeder said remembrance of the crimes remains a moral obligation.
Many have interpreted Schroeder's comments as being directed toward Japan, which has been criticized by Asian countries that suffered Japanese militarism during World War II.
Earlier this month, the Japanese Education Ministry defied protests by approving a revised middle school history textbook that seeks to minimize the country's war crimes and glorify its invasion of neighboring countries more than half a century ago.
In an interview with a German newspaper last week, Roh criticized Japan's attitude toward history, saying that whitewashing wartime history runs against universal human values.
(Xinhua News Agency April 15, 2005)
