US President George W. Bush is scheduled to start a three-day
visit to Germany on Wednesday as part of efforts to improve his
relations with the leading European country.
This will be Bush's first visit to Germany after Chancellor
Angela Merkel assumed the leading role in German politics last
November. Bush is to arrive late on Wednesday in Merkel's hometown,
Stralsund, in the state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.
Bush, who is en route to the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg,
Russia, will meet Merkel, Mayor Harald Lastovka and around 1,000
hand-picked citizens in the medieval town.
Security personnel from both the US and Germany have been
working for weeks in the area. German media reports said some 20
million euros (about US$26 million) had been spent on security for
the visit.
In Stralsund, streets are deserted, drains have been welded shut
and 12,000 police have been mobilized. The security measures have
drawn criticism from local residents.
As Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is plagued by an unemployment
rate as high as 20 percent and a weak economy with little industry,
local officials argued that any spending on Bush's security should
be paid by the federal government.
Harald Ringstorff, the state premier, told local media, "The one
who orders the music should pay for it."
Bush is also unlikely to receive a warm welcome from many when
he arrives. More than 5,000 protesters are expected to turn up in
Stralsund to voice their opposition toward the visit, according to
the German magazine Der Spiegel.
The Left Party is officially going to take part in the protests.
The state's environment and social ministers also plan to go.
"Indeed, it's tough to find anyone in the state with much
positive to say about Bush's visit," Der Spiegel said. It
quoted a reader as telling a local newspaper, "He (Bush) represents
the most aggressive wing of US politics."
In a similar report, the German Deutsche Welle radio quoted
local residents as saying that they are not interested in Bush's
visit.
Engineer Heiko Lawrenz from Stralsund plans to escape to a
building site for the day. "You have to be inside from eight in the
morning, and cannot open a window or come out until the president
leaves," he said.
"I cannot make any appointments, and it will be impossible to
work," said Eginhard Gieber, the manager of the St Nikolai
Evangelical Church Center in Stralsund, who added that Bush's visit
made "no sense" given the "enormous poverty in the region."
"You could build a whole new children's home with all that
money," he said.
The hometown visit is part of joint efforts by Germany and the
Bush administration to further improve bilateral ties, which had
cooled during Gerhard Schroeder's chancellorship.
Since assuming power, Merkel has paid two visits to the US.
Despite the fact that German public attitude toward the US and
Bush remains unchanged, at government level the German-US
relationship has begun to shift. At least leaders in Washington and
Berlin are no longer finger-pointing.
Welcoming Bush, Merkel said in an interview on RTL television on
Monday that it was important for him to see for himself the
"changes and problems" caused by the reunification of Germany in
1990. She said Bush's trip would help "complete the picture" of the
country.
However, Merkel, who is more pragmatic than Americans had
thought, did not change the substance of Germany's foreign
policy.
Nile Gardiner and John Hulsman, German experts at the Heritage
Foundation, wrote in an article published on the Internet that "The
Merkel chancellorship does not herald a fundamental transformation
of the US-German relationship."
"Some of the most important portfolios in terms of US interests
are held by remnants of the Schroeder government, which could
barely disguise its contempt for the Bush administration," they
said.
During their talks, Merkel and Bush are expected to discuss a
wide range of issues including the Iran nuclear program, Iraq, the
Middle East, Guantanamo prison and others.
Merkel has been very critical of the US Guantanamo prison,
pressuring Washington to close it. On the issue of the Iran nuclear
program, the German government insists that the Bush administration
should talk directly with Iran.
Bush and Merkel may reach agreements on some issues. But it will
be difficult for them to bring any substantial change to German-US
relations, as the two powers do not rely on each other today as
they did during the Cold War.
Gardiner and Hulsman have reminded the Bush administration,
"Washington should be under no illusions that the Germany of today
is the same as that of Helmut Kohl or Konrad Adenauer," referring
to the two chancellors who enjoyed very close relations with the US
during the Cold War years.
(Xinhua News Agency July 13, 2006)
