Former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt said Friday that Germany did not need a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, a demand posed earlier in the week by Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. In a guest column for the mass-circulation Bild newspaper, Schmidt said Germany should seek its role in building up international law and boosting the institutions of the United Nations and the Security Council. "A permanent seat on the Security Council is not necessary for this," said the 85-year-old Schmidt. Schmidt - the Social Democratic chancellor of then-West Germany from 1974 to 1982 - dismissed as "off-the-mark" arguments posed by some German politicians and diplomats that Germany had a role to play in world politics. "It is not in Germany's interest to be involved in each and every important decision on war and peace around the world and then to be accountable for the effects," Schmidt wrote. He said the chief foreign policy task ahead for Germany is in helping the 25-nation European Union overcome its current crisis. The E.U. faced such problems as an ageing society, declining population, and structural unemployment. Schmidt, with a new book on the market titled "The Powers of the Future", predicted a tri-polar economic world in the next 30 years consisting of the United States, China, and the E.U. It will evolve "without the U.S. being able to stop it", he said. The former chancellor said that the United States needed both criticism but also understanding from the Europeans. While the current U.S. political class and government appeared to have no interest in listening to others, he said, "only half of the responsibility lies with the Americans. "The blame for the other half is with the Europeans, who are unable to see to it that they speak with a common voice," Schmidt charged.
