German Chancellor Mr Gerhard Schroeder said today there was broadening support for his stance of opposing a US military attack on Iraq, as a dispute brewed between his government and the US ambassador to Berlin.
"We're sensing that agreement with the position we have taken is growing rather than receding," Mr Schroeder told the Berlin Foreign Press Association.
He said opposition to a strike was growing even in the United States and noted that ex-national security adviser Mr Brent Scowcroft and former secretary of state Mr Lawrence Eagleburger, who both served under the first President George Bush, had voiced reservations about an attack.
"The view I have that such military intervention in Iraq would be wrong is now very broad even in the United States," he said.
Trailing in opinion polls ahead of a September 22nd election, Mr Schroeder has played to mounting public concern in Germany about Iraq, distracting attention from bad economic data and courting left-wing voters by exploiting fears of war.
"Friendship doesn't mean having to agree on all issues, it means one is so close that one can also disagree on some things," Mr Schroeder said of relations with the United States.
Europe's leaders agree Iraqi President Saddam Hussein must let UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq unconditionally, but many fear a pre-emptive strike against him could worsen tension in the Middle East and hurt the world economy.