Germany selects new president

BERLIN -- Horst Koehler, a former head of the International Monetary Fund who advocates bolder economic reforms in Germany, was elected Sunday as the country's ninth postwar president.\nNominated by opposition conservatives, Koehler defeated Gesine Schwan, a university professor backed by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government who sought to become Germany's first female head of state.\nKoehler, a 61-year-old finance expert, won by a vote of 604-589 by a special assembly of lawmakers and state delegates in Berlin's Reichstag parliament building.\nAs electors rose and clapped, Koehler blinked back tears and received congratulatory handshake from Schwan. In his acceptance speech, Koehler encouraged Germans to be more innovative and self-reliant, indicating he would push for further trims in Germany's welfare state.\n"In my opinion Germany is too slow on the path toward a knowledge-based society," he said. "But my dream goes even further: Germany should become a land of ideas."\n"We have to face reality. Germany has to fight for its place in the 21st century."\nGermany's presidency is largely ceremonial and nominally above politics, but incumbents have often influenced national policy debates and are considered a voice of moral authority.\nKoehler replaces Johannes Rau, a member of Schroeder's Social Democrats who is stepping down after a single five-year term. Rau made history in 2000 as the first German president to give a speech in the Israeli parliament.\nKoehler's victory had been widely expected, which diverted attention before the vote to state delegate Hans Filbinger, 90, who allegedly was involved in passing death sentences as a Nazi-era naval judge.\nSome Jewish groups called for his removal, but the Christian Democrats, who appointed the former judge, stood firm.\nKoehler held a series of finance posts in the German government, headed the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, then spent the last four years in Washington as the IMF's managing director.\nHe quit the post when the center-right Christian Democrats and Free Democrats nominated him in March.\nThough he helped former Chancellor Helmut Kohl negotiate German reunification in 1990, Koehler was largely unknown to the general public before his nomination.\nHe has said he wants to bring his experience in national and international affairs to the post, and has called on Germans to accept further trims in social programs, work longer hours and rely less on government as a way out of three years of economic stagnation.\nOn Sunday, Koehler said Germans must not rest on past achievements, including the reputation of the "made in Germany" label. "I am deeply convinced Germany has the strength for change," he said.\nThe Christian Democrats, his main backers, are using the same themes to hammer Schroeder in opinion polls and welcomed Koehler's victory as a boost in their campaign to unseat him as chancellor in 2006 elections.\nChristian Democratic leader Angela Merkel said it was a "good signal" for Germany's center-right.\nEchoing a widespread sentiment in Germany, Koehler criticized U.S. policy in Iraq during the low-key presidential campaign.\nHe was quoted as telling a closed meeting of his political backers that the United States was "arrogant" -- a remark he has not denied -- and he criticized Washington for lacking a concept for "winning the peace" in Iraq.\nBorn during World War II in Nazi-occupied Poland, Koehler has pledged to bring sensitivity to his personal history to bear on his new job.\nHis ethnic German parents had lived in Romania, but moved under pressure from the Soviet Union to the eastern Polish town of Skierbieszow.\nNazi SS troops had deported the town's Polish residents as part of a pilot project to "Germanize" conquered areas of eastern Europe, and the Koehlers moved into a vacated house. Koehler was born Feb. 22, 1943.\nAs the Red Army advanced westward, the family fled to communist eastern Germany and in 1953 moved to West Germany, living at first in refugee housing. One of eight children, Koehler is the only one who went to university.\n"Patriotism and being cosmopolitan are not opposites," he said Sunday. "Only those who respect themselves can also respect others"