"I don't believe that one people can get a message from God to free another people," Rau

By Khaled Schmitt, IOL Germany Correspondent

BONN, April 1 (ISlamOnline.net) – German President Johannes Rau took his usually reserved reactions out in public and joined scathing criticism of U.S. President George W. Bush's use of religious language during speeches defending the need for military aggression against Iraq.

"I don't believe that one people can get a message from God to free another people," said Rau, who holds a largely ceremonial post that is seen as the nation's moral voice, in an interview with N-TV television.

He slammed Bush's efforts to put a religious spin on his justifications for invasion of Iraq, saying such a vision is deceptively one-sided and away from Christian values as Bush used to pretend in his speeches.

"The Bible was not a gun or a war directed at non-Christians, and the holy book never made mention of the crusades the U.S. president used to tout,"

Many religious leaders in Germany echoed the same criticisms of "Christianizing" the U.S-led aggression against Iraq.

Rev. Christian Fuehrer, a 60-year-old pastor who helped organize the massive protests in the run-up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, accused Bush of using "pseudo-religious words" to justify the invasion and appealed to the German government to withdraw permission for the U.S. military to use the country's bases.

Not Inevitable

Rau said he believed that aggression against Iraq, now raging for 13 days, could not be  justified or considered inevitable, as Americans could have put up more patience and weigh their options for a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis by allowing the U.N weapons inspectors a full chance in Iraq.

"There are situations in which war is inevitable, but that wasn't the case in Iraq."

The U.S. administration had dismissed chief U.N. weapons inspectors' assurances that Iraq showed active cooperation with their teams and declared war would be launched with or without the sanction of the world body.

The German president expressed his wonder at the U.S. change of heart on Iraq, from sticking to disarming Iraq as the main objective of their diplomatic flurry to urgently calling for toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and going to war despite world-wide opposition.

“This contradictory situation only exposes an intentional desire to wage a military aggression against the Arab country,” Rau told the German television in anger.

"The U.S  administration turned a blind eye to the Arab-Israeli conflict as an epidemic problem that needs an urgent solution while preferring to launch war against Iraq," he wondered.

Responding to the head of the Jewish German Council, a staunch support for the U.S.-led offensive against Iraq, Rau categorically indirectly rejected to strike any comparison between the current military campaign against the Arab Islamic country and the U.S. intervention to liberate Germany of the reins of Zionists.

"The American military intervention left our country paying a dear price with a higher death toll of civilian Germans and blazing all of its towns to the ground".

"Shocked"

The German president said he was "shocked at by the scenes of destruction and civilian victims" shown after the start of the U.S. and British attacks against Iraq and that he these horrific pictures revived his painful memories of the destruction of his own city in World War II.

Rau called on his country's protestors against war to abandon stirring up hate sentiments against Islam, the United States or Jews.

The German president referred to the anti-war demonstrations in Indonesia, the most populous Islamic country, that drew more than 300,000 people which he said indicated the grave consequences of the war including expanding the rift between the Islamic world and the West.

About Muslim communities in Germany, Rau said that he received many letters from Muslims expressing their concerns about living in the country despite public opposition to war.

Surveys have shown that an overwhelming majority of Germans are against military aggression against Iraq, and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government has strongly opposed it.

On Monday, March 31, thousands of protesters took to the streets of the eastern German city of Leipzig, demanding an immediate end to the war in Iraq in the latest of a series of demonstrations that have echoed the city's 1989 pro-democracy marches.

On Saturday, March 29, more than 100,000 people in total turned out for anti-war demonstrations across the country.