The United States' new focus on Asia may mean Washington is less interested in Europe, Germany's former foreign minister warned Sunday in a speech to the opposition Social Democrats (SPD), dpa reported. Frank-Walter Steinmeier accused Chancellor Angela Merkel of being indecisive, charging that her "changes of mind" had weakened Europe's influence in world affairs. He said US President Barack Obama's commitment to partnership with Pacific rim nations was an indirect way of saying that the US-Europe alliance was out of date. "Europe is no longer at the centre of interest," he told the annual three-day SPD conference in Berlin on its opening day. He also called for a European monetary fund to be set up, using the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which is planned to start up in 2013, as the basis, saying joint liability for government debts by the whole 17-nation eurozone would be unavoidable in the end. He said the eurozone also needed to set up a further fund that would gradually pay back all the debts of the over-indebted euro governments, modelled on a fund that took many years to settle the debts of defunct communist East Germany after reunification in 1990. Steinmeier, currently leader of the SPD in the federal parliament, is one of three leading Social Democrats seeking the party nomination for chancellor at the 2013 general election. The party faces an uphill battle, and trails Merkel's Christian Democrats in polls.
