Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping introduced a proposal at a cabinet meeting in Berlin on Wednesday morning to send 50 medical orderlies on two Transall airplanes to East Timor. Especially considering the price tag, which isn't to exceed ten million marks (just over $5 million), the plan may appear to add up to little more than a footnote to the overall story of the international peacekeeping mission. But any decision leading to the dispatch of German soldiers to foreign soil, no matter what their function, is a potential political bombshell in the ongoing debate over Germany's role on the international stage.
Scharping's proposal is hardly a surprise. Newspapers are reporting that he and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer have been discussing taking some sort of action in East Timor that would be acceptable to the broadest political spectrum. Neither are comfortable standing by as Germany's neighbors, such as France, Italy and Spain, take part in the UN mission. Sending medical aid is not likely to set off a wave of pacifist protest or the sort of furious debates in parliament and on the streets sparked by Germany's military engagement in Kosovo.
East Timor and Kosovo are two very different predicaments, of course. Fischer in particular saw Kosovo as a moral quandary in Germany's backyard and he was willing to lay his job on the line when his own party, the Greens, threatened to withdraw support for Germany's first full-fledged military operation since World War II. As an example of the magnitude of the governing "red-green" coalition's break from postwar German policy, even Gregor Gysi, head of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) faction in parliament, believes to this day that former Chancellor Helmut Kohl would have kept the army out of Kosovo by loosening up generous financial support for the operation instead.
There is a precedent for Scharping's medical aid proposal for East Timor, though. Germany provided similar support for the international mission in Cambodia during Kohl's sixteen year reign as chancellor. Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo, the Catholic Bishop of East Timor and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, met with Kohl in Berlin on Wednesday before proceeding to meetings with Fischer and German President Johannes Rau. Calling for a "Marshall Plan" for East Timor, Belo said the situation in his homeland reminds him of 1945 when German cities were devastated. "At the end of the 20th century," he said, "the same thing is being repeated in East Timor."
There is also a domestic political angle to Scharping's proposal. Finance Minister Hans Eichel has been calling for across-the-board cuts in the federal budget and defense would be no exception. Scharping has resisted such cuts as the wrong move at the wrong time, coming on the heels of Germany's role in the war in Kosovo and the ongoing peacekeeping mission there. Eichel is reported to have given the ten million mark nod for Scharping's proposal and all bets are on a rapid final approval.
Germany and Europe on the Web today:
"It has taken a long time for corporate restructuring to spread from the US to Germany, but the laggard is catching up fast," writes Haig Simonian in the "Financial Times", drawing on the examples of Germany's largest electricity generating group just now formed by the merger of Viag and Veba and the restructuring of Siemens, DaimlerChrysler and Mannesmann. Free registration required
"Mr. Schröder has settled on a wise course, and he must not waver." So argues a "New York Times" editorial which rather startlingly refers to the most drastic financial reforms in German postwar history as "mild modifications" and "small steps". Free registration required
In "Time" magazine, Charles P. Wallace reports on "Germany's byzantine system of consumer protection laws" and on a meeting of former Col d War spies in Berlin, and Steve Zwick peeks behind the scenes at Gig a, an interactive German TV show.
The election to watch this Sunday will be in Austria where the far right has found a winner in Jörg Haider, leader of the Freedom Party. Julian Coman provides background in the "Telegraph".
Allan Hall reports in the London "Times" on Karinhall, Hermann Goering's getaway, which has become a magnet for apolitical treasure hunters and neo-Nazis alike.
No one who even lightly scans the "NYT" bestseller list could help noticing over the last few years that The Reader by Bernhard Schlink has been, as the "Telegraph" puts it, "the slow-burning publishing success of the Nineties." Novelist Josephine Hart describes the powerful impact of this novel, "written with deceptive simplicity, in the sparest prose," and then meets and interviews the author.
Architect Sir Norman Foster's steel and glass dome atop the renovated Reichstag now rivals the Brandenburg Gate as the symbol of new capital. Because the two are just one city block apart, shots of one with the other in the background are a common motif for advertisers hoping to link the "New Berlin" with their product, whether it be a beer or a newspaper. But an ugly clash has broken out between Foster and the agency overseeing reconstruction of the Reichstag. The agency is withholding payments and Foster is threatening to withdraw his team. Andrew Gimson reports in the "Telegraph".
Roger Boyes looks ahead in the London "Times" to 2002 when Sir Simon Rattle becomes the sixth artistic director of the Berlin Philharmonic: "[T]he Phil acts as a kind of barometer for German culture as a whole, sets its standards, is wary of popularising concessions. It is the embodiment of high culture and its 20,000 season ticketholders flashed their cards as if they were part of a secret torch-bearing elite."
Last Friday, Rattle gave a preview of delights to come, conducting the Berlin Philharmonic during the city's month-long Mahler festival. Geoffrey Norris was there for the "Telegraph": "Not only was the performance of Mahler's Tenth Symphony applauded to the rafters, but also Rattle himself was called back and accorded two, Karajan-style standing ovations after the orchestra had left the platform."
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