GERMANY:Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder has described British prime minister Tony Blair as a "sorcerer's apprentice", trapped by an out-of-control war in Iraq.
In his just published memoir, Decisions, Mr Schröder suggests that Mr Blair's determination to prove that the Conservatives did not have a monopoly on the special relationship with the US made him a hostage of Washington and a disappointment in Europe.
"This British prime minister, by all means a man of firm moral convictions and anything but a war enthusiast, paid and continues to pay a high price for his engagement in [ Iraq]," Mr Schröder writes.
He was "greatly disappointed" by Britain's engagement in the European Union, particularly because he thought that Britain could join France and Germany to form a troika to lead Europe.
"This impression was illusory. Britain will not deliver any European impulse in the near future," he writes. "On the contrary, the country will attempt to maintain its mediatory role in transatlantic relations even at the cost of the European integration process."
Mr Schröder says this became clear for him last year when Britain "torpedoed" Luxembourg's compromise EU finance plan for 2007-2013.
The former chancellor refrains from criticising the new government in Berlin, except to express concern that "the newly won freedom and independence in foreign policy would be given up" and that Germany would return to the "lap" of the US.
Mr Schröder piles strange praise on French president Jacques Chirac, for his "sensitive relationship with the underclass" and for Mr Chirac's "pathos", derived from what he calls his "self-evident French showmanship".
He writes how Mr Chirac, who liked to flirt openly with Mr Schröder's wife, Doris, now enjoys a "close relationship" with his six-year-old adopted daughter, Viktoria. "To this day they occasionally talk with each other on the phone," writes the former chancellor. "Because there is no translator, they can hear each other but not understand each other, something that does their relationship no harm."
He has warm words too for Russian president Vladimir Putin, one-time statesman colleague and now indirectly his boss since he became an employee of a subsidiary of the state-owned Gazprom gas company.
"[ Putin's] vision is the reconstruction of Russia as a world power that deals, talks and acts at the same eye-level as the US," he says. "He sees Russia as a part of Europe, culturally and emotionally."
Mr Schröder's quickly written memoir went on sale yesterday in a print run of 160,000 and will soon appear in eight languages worldwide, according to the publisher. It has already been criticised for failing to mention important political colleagues.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern doesn't appear once.
Mr Schröder replied that he didn't want to be "accountant-like".
At yesterday's book presentation, the prime minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker, said Mr Schröder had made a "light-footed" entrance to office but left a "much more serious person".
"You were a great chancellor," said Mr Juncker. A survey for Stern magazine suggests that 56 per cent of Germans agree.