Schroeder wins close election

BERLIN -- Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats won Germany's closest postwar election Sunday, after a campaign that focused on fears of a war with Iraq and unleashed anti-American rhetoric.\nA jubilant Schroeder appeared arm-in-arm with Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of the Greens party, the partner in his governing coalition, before cheering supporters at Social Democratic Party headquarters.\n"We have hard times in front of us and we're going to make it together," Schroeder shouted above the din.\nWith 99.7 percent of the vote counted, official results showed the Social Democrats and Greens combined won 47.1 percent of the vote to continue their coalition for another four years. The conservative challengers led by Bavarian governor Edmund Stoiber had 45.9 percent in a likely alliance with the Free Democrats, who had 7.4 percent.\nThe Social Democrats and environmentalist Greens won 305 seats in the new parliament of 601 seats, compared to 294 for the conservative challengers led by Bavarian governor Edmund Stoiber, according to projections by ARD public television. Smaller parties won the remaining seats.\nStoiber stopped short of conceding in a speech to rowdy supporters in Munich, but predicted that Schroeder's majority would be too slim to form a lasting coalition.\n"Should the result not allow us to form a government, then I predict before you that this Schroeder government will rule for only a very short time," he said.\nStoiber said Schroeder will have to repair relations with Washington, damaged by a new German assertiveness that emerged over American determination to oust Saddam Hussein.\nSchroeder, whose outspoken defiance against war with Iraq was credited with giving him a late push in the tight campaign, said he won't back down. He has insisted he would not commit troops for a war even if the United Nations backs military action.\nWhile Schroeder's anti-war stand resonated with German voters, the rhetoric reached a damaging peak in the final days of his campaign when Justice Minister Herta Daeuberl-Gmelin was reported to have compared President Bush to Hitler for threatening war to distract from domestic problems. She denied saying it.\nThe Social Democrats already have made clear she would not have a post if they are re-elected, however Schroeder sought to appease Washington with a conciliatory letter to Bush. Washington reacted cooly -- indicating to analysts that a Schroeder team will have to work hard to repair the traditionally strong bond.\n"It seems to me that for the relationship and the Iraq issue itself there's no doubt that Schroeder was trying to tap radical pacifist and anti-American sentiment in the population and preliminarily it doesn't seem to have hurt him. And it may have even helped him," said Jeffrey Gedmin, director of the Aspen Institute think tank in Berlin.\nSpeaking on CNN Sunday, Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the "core relationship between the Republic of Germany and the United States is solid. What you had is Schroeder doing what a lot of politicians do, trying to get out his base."\nBiden, D-Del., said the relationship between the two countries can be repaired.\nStoiber, who used the ruckus over Iraq as ammunition, again accused the chancellor of whipping up emotions against the United States for electoral gain.