Germany's lower house of parliament yesterday voted overwhelmingly to support international military action to fight terrorism, as the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, arrived in Berlin to drum up support for a military coalition.
However the Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schr÷der, said that although Germany was "prepared to take risks, even military risks" in the war against terrorism, it would not get involved in military campaigns it deemed unwise.
Mr Schr÷der repeated his call for a campaign to tackle terrorism on all fronts. "A fixation on exclusively military means would be fatal," he said.
Mr Schr÷der added that any coalition against terrorism would only be legitimate if Arab and Islamic states participated.
"We are not at war against any one country. And we are not at war with the entire Islamic world," he said, a point taken up by Mr Blair, at a joint press conference.
"I believe that in this coalition will be a large number of Islamic and Arab state who want to participate and support the fight against international terrorism," Mr Blair said.
The German parliamentary motion yesterday expressed support for the US, but did not commit Germany to any specific military action.
Only the reformed communist party voted against the motion, while Mr Schr÷der's junior coalition partners, the Greens, voted with the motion despite reservations, giving the chancellor one less political headache in the weeks ahead.
The Finance Minister, Mr Hans Eichel, said yesterday that the government planned to spend an additional DM3 billion (£1.2 billion) next year in the fight against terrorism.
Measures to increase national security include new rapid-reaction facilities for the army and the secret service and better security in airports. Measures are also planned to tighten up money laundering legislation.
The government yesterday approved a motion to abolish special privileges that kept religious groups in Germany safe from investigation by the secret service.
Many of the measures passed yesterday were already in the pipeline before last week's attacks in the US. However the government was spurred on by police suspicions that the attacks were organised in part by members of an extremist organisation posing as a religious group in Hamburg.
There are about 3.1 million Muslims living in Germany. The German intelligence agency, the BND, classifies more than 3,000 muslims as "potential extremists" and says there are up to 30 "terror cells" in Germany like the ones believed to have carried out last week's hijackings.
Opinion polls suggest that public support in Germany for military action is wavering. Only 53 per cent of Germans favour backing US military action, compared to 73 per cent in France and 79 per cent in Britain, according to a poll published yesterday in the French newspaper Liberation.
A poll taken shortly after last week's attacks showed 69 per cent support for military action.
