Fischer on 'Mission Impossible'

By Ray Furlong
BBC Berlin correspondent

Germany will politely refuse to help with the occupation of Iraq

The German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, has left for his first trip to the United States since the Iraq war.

Germany was a staunch opponent of military action, and has since been working hard to repair its damaged relations with the United States.

But the trip has been dubbed Mission Impossible by one German news magazine.

Last week's call by Donald Rumsfeld for more countries, including Germany, to help with the occupation of Iraq puts Mr Fischer in the position of having to say a polite, but firm, No.

Germany's armed forces are already thinly stretched, with units in Afghanistan, the Balkans, and the Horn of Africa.

But the main problem is political.

Germany wants a request to come from what it calls "a legitimate Iraqi interim administration" with a UN mandate.

Mr Fischer's talks with Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, will be the easiest.

The two men have maintained a good relationship despite the differences over Iraq and the last time Mr Fischer visited, in October, Mr Powell was the only senior US official to speak to him.

His meetings with Vice-President Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor, might be frostier.

They did not invite him to the White House last time round and Ms Rice said recently that Mr Fischer's radical past was not suitable for a statesman.

There is some speculation here about whether President Bush himself might drop in at the meeting with Mr Cheney, as he did during the visit of a German opposition politician earlier this year - much to the annoyance of the German government.