MIDDLE EAST: The German Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, has called on the US and Europe to hammer out a new peace plan for the Middle East, saying military might alone will not solve the region's problems.
The US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, told a security conference in Munich the Bush administration was right to declare war on Iraq, saying Saddam Hussein wasn't threatening the West with "snowballs".
Mr Fischer said: "Our concerted efforts to foster peace and security are doomed to failure if we believe that only security issues matter. Neither the US nor Europe and the Middle East itself can tolerate the status quo in the Middle East any longer."
Mr Fischer said Germany felt vindicated for staying out of the Iraq war, a decision that led to verbal blows with Mr Rumsfeld at last year's conference.
"It was our political decision not to join the coalition because we were not, and are still not, convinced of the validity of the reasons for war," said Mr Fischer. "The government feels events have proven the position it took over the Iraq war to be right."
Mr Rumsfeld defended the decision of the US to go to war, saying it was a mystery why Saddam acted as he did.
"If the Iraqi regime had taken the steps Libya is now taking - there would have been no war," said Mr Rumsfeld. He said US pre-emptive military action was justified because it was more serious than a matter of a "snowball in the face".
He went on: "As you go up the scale from snowballs to the weapon of mass destruction, at some point . . . there's not going to be a snowball in your face but a biological weapon that can kill tens of thousands of human beings. The greater the danger, the lower the threshold for action."
He was challenged on this point by Mr Josef Joffe, publisher of the influential German weekly, Die Zeit, who said: "If you think someone's got a gun in his pocket, you should check first in case he's just stroking his pipe."
NATO Secretary General, Mr Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said the alliance could not "abdicate from its responsibilities" if asked to send help to Iraq. Mr Fischer said Berlin, while "deeply sceptical" of such a mission, would not stand in NATO's way.