Schroeder backs Fischer over visa policy

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder strongly backed his foreign minister yesterday amid a parliamentary inquiry into allegations that lax visa practices opened Germany's door to criminals and women being trafficked as prostitutes.

Schroeder's backing came shortly after Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer Germany's most popular politician said he was ready to testify before lawmakers to address the allegations being pushed by the conservative opposition.

"If the opposition believes it can topple the foreign minister, it is making a huge mistake," Schroeder told reporters. "Joschka Fischer has my full support and my full confidence."

Any abuses would be stopped, he said.

After letting the allegations percolate for weeks, Fischer broke his public silence. He said he takes responsibility for a March 2000 directive drawn up in his ministry that apparently gave German embassies in the former Soviet bloc wide leeway in granting immigration requests.

A parliamentary committee is investigating opposition allegations that the policy made it too easy for criminals to come to Germany, notably from Ukraine, and contributed to the number of women trafficked to Germany and forced into prostitution.

"I am ready to face questioning in the committee," Fischer said yesterday.

Fischer, a former student radical who battled police in Frankfurt streets in the 1970s, regularly tops opinion polls as Germans' favourite politician. He is deputy chancellor in Schroeder's Social Democrat-led governing coalition with the Greens.

Fischer has weathered previous political storms, though some German commentators are calling the "visa affair" his worst yet.

He refused to comment in detail on questions surrounding the visa policy, saying he wants to save that for the parliamentary committee.

But he insisted that key types of travel documents for immigrants under scrutiny in the inquiry were introduced by the previous conservative government of Helmut Kohl.

Even members of Fischer's own Green party have acknowledged that the government's policy led to abuses, though they defended its aim of making Germany a welcoming country for foreigners.

"The directive was right and necessary, but this liberal practice clearly was abused," Greens deputy chairman Hans-Christian Stroebele said on ZDF television yesterday.