[Culturechat] "Is This Schroeder's End?"

[WesTexas@aol.com]

>From News Reports:  
J. Brown

 BERLIN, Germany -- Gerhard Schroeder has promised to fight on as German 
chancellor after two crippling state election defeats for which he accepted 
most of the blame. 

Just four months after Schroeder narrowly won reelection, the SPD lost 
control of the statehouse in the chancellor's native Lower Saxony to the 
conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), who also increased their majority in 
Hesse. 

A tired and sombre-looking chancellor said Sunday's twin defeats for his 
centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) had dealt him "one of the bitterest 
defeats I have known" and that "the government and I have to carry the 
central responsibility for this defeat." 

But he insisted he was not considering resignation. "I am not thinking about 
it and others (in the SPD) are not thinking about it either," he told a news 
conference. 

Anger at high unemployment and tax rises played a major part in the 
campaigns, but opposition politicians and analysts said many voters had also 
rejected the government's isolationist stance on the question of war with 
Iraq. 

German newspapers on Monday speculated on whether Schroeder would be forced 
to reshuffle his Cabinet or even to enter a national coalition with the 
Christian Democrats, which increased their majority in the upper house of 
parliament. 

The SPD again tried to appeal to Germans' anti-war sentiments, as it did 
during the federal elections. But CDU leader Angela Merkel said she was 
pleased that voters had "refused to be seduced a second time by a mood of 
fear." 

"This is an important signal to the European allies and to the American 
government," Merkel told AP. "I think much is at stake for German foreign 
policy. 

"I think it was a big mistake by the chancellor to take a position before he 
saw the (U.N.) inspectors' report. That isolated Germany," said Merkel, who 
plans to travel to the United States later this month. 

As tabloid Bild ran the banner headline "Is This Schroeder's End?," political 
analysts said the chancellor's stance on Iraq might cost him his job.