Not only has the government reneged on most of the reforms it promised but, despite Oskar Lafontaine's warnings, it has imposed unprecedented austerity on a country already suffering from record unemployment. Ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and eight years after reunification, this crisis marks the completion of Germany's return to normal. The Federal Republic is encountering the same difficulties as its neighbours. Its famous political stability is now a thing of the past. In a matter of months the chancellor's popularity has plunged as low as his predecessor's after 16 years in office.
Whole provinces are now under foreign control and abuses abound.
Meanwhile, plausible arguments are deployed to conceal the greed and lust for power provoked by the immense wealth of this wounded giant of central Africa. Triumphantly endorsed on 26 September by a referendum in which he was the only candidate, he has now been sworn in for his fourth six-year term of office. Although Ehud Barak has finally agreed to apply the Wye River memorandum signed by his predecessor he does not see the Palestinian problem as the key issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is pinning hopes on an agreement with president Hafez Al Assad to secure peace with Syria and Lebanon. Resuming talks with Damascus, however, would require Israel to withdraw to the lines occupied on 4 June 1967.