Germany suspects US "smear" over Iraq

Tue Feb 28, 6:20 PM ET

BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. media reports that German intelligence agents helped the American-led invasion of Iraq were a smear tactic against Berlin as a European power firmly opposed to the war, leading German politicians said on Tuesday.

The politicians from major parties, including the Social Democrats (SPD) of ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, were reacting to reports that could embarrass current Chancellor Angel Merkel because she leads a coalition government of her conservatives with the SPD.

Germany denied on Monday a New York Times report that its intelligence officials obtained a copy of Saddam Hussein's defense plan for Baghdad and passed it on to U.S. commanders a month before the 2003 Iraq invasion.

"This is an attempt to discredit the policies of Gerhard Schroeder, policies that were right," SPD chairman Matthias Platzeck told a group of foreign journalists on Tuesday.

"It's so patently obvious what is going on and it won't succeed. It's all very strange. Someone is trying to denounce Schroeder's Iraq policy."

Platzeck's comments were echoed by opposition leaders in Germany, which like France strongly opposed the Iraq war. They said the reports that appeared to make the German government look hypocritical may be fiction deliberately planted to embarrass the many German critics of U.S. policies on Iraq.

The German BND intelligence agency has also rejected the report as wrong and German opposition leaders were suspicious of the motives behind its publication.

"One can't just reject it out of hand that others may give information to the media to cast the position of the former government into doubt," Wolfgang Gerhardt, parliamentary head of the liberal Free Democrats told German radio.

"You can never prove it, but I would guess that some people in friendly services were so annoyed by the attitude of (Schroeder's government) that one or two may have got it off their chests."

It is not the first time the suspicion of U.S. involvement in reports with a potential to embarrass Berlin has been raised.

The New York Times story followed other media reports last month about the agents which prompted Merkel's new government to issue a special report to parliament.

When the stories first emerged, just before Merkel was due to visit Washington, politicians from the opposition Greens said they had been leaked in revenge for criticism she had made of the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay.

While denying the New York Times story, the German government said BND agents did provide limited help to U.S. forces in identifying civilian sites that should be avoided in bombing raids.

In early December a similarly embarrassing report appeared in the Washington Post, saying the Schroeder government had been informed of the mistaken CIA abduction of German citizen Khaled el-Masri and had failed to act. The report came out shortly before a visit to Europe by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

At the time, Washington was facing allegations that the CIA ran secret prisons in Europe and elsewhere and transferred prisoners to countries where they faced being tortured.

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