Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister, was fighting for his political life last night after accepting the blame for a legal loophole that allegedly allowed tens of thousands of criminals from the ex-Soviet bloc to enter the country on tourist visas. Commenting publicly for the first time on a scandal that last week brought down his fellow Green, Ludger Vollmer, Mr Fischer admitted "oversights and mistakes" within his ministry. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder rushed to the defence of the government's number two and the man without whose support he would not have won the 2002 election, saying that Mr Fischer had his "full trust and full support".
"You have to make the case; I'm sorry but I am not convinced."
"The best thing he could do is to resign," Christian Wulff, the prime minister of Lower Saxony, told a meeting of his Christian Democratic Party. The head of the CDU, Angela Merkel, stopped short of calling for Mr Fischer's resignation but made pointed reference to several ministers who had lost their posts due to "lesser offences". She said in a newspaper interview: "Mr Fischer apparently closed his eyes to massive visa abuse by women forced into prostitution, illegal workers and criminals. That endangered our country's security." The opposition argues that a statute introduced in 1999 allowed hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from eastern Europe, especially Ukraine, to cross into Germany between 2000 and 2003, often with the help of criminal gangs. Among them were drug and human traffickers, prostitutes and one of the Chechen terrorists involved in the 2002 Moscow theatre siege.
Germany's relatively liberal immigration legislation has been under particular scrutiny since late 2001 when it emerged that several of the September 11 hijackers had lived and studied in Germany with ease, despite being under the observation of intelligence officers. Since then debate has focused on how to balance stricter controls while maintaining an open society. |