Schroeder criticised for taking up post with Russian energy giant

BERLIN - Germany's former Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, faced a barrage of criticism at home and abroad yesterday after taking up a highly controversial Euros 250,000 a year post on the board of the state-controlled Russian energy giant Gazprom.

Mr Schroeder was yesterday formally appointed chairman of Gazprom's North European Gas Pipeline company, whose Baltic Sea pipeline project he helped launch just days before he was voted out of office last September.

He also announced plans to set up a Russian-German think tank in Germany to develop understanding and improve relations between the two countries.

However, both decisions provoked widespread criticism from politicians and human rights activists in both countries.

German politicians have questioned Mr Schroeder's judgement in accepting a job with a state-controlled Russian company that has angered both the Ukraine and other eastern European countries by using its Baltic pipeline project to bypass them.

Guenter Nooke, the German government's human rights specialist, said that as Chancellor Mr Schroeder had already damaged Germany's human rights reputation by his uncritical acceptance of President Vladimir Putin's foreign and domestic policies.

"With the Gazprom job he is continuing his insensitive behaviour," Mr Nooke said .

In Russia, human rights activists bitterly attacked Mr Schroeder's plans for a Russian-German think tank.

"This is simply a Kremlin propaganda instrument," said Stalislav Belkovski, the director of the Moscow-based Institute for National Strategy.

"Putin's reputation has sunk enormously in the West. Schroeder is now meant to repair the damage," he added.

Members of Mr Schroeder's own Social Democratic Party have also been disturbed by the number of highly paid jobs the ex-Chancellor has accepted since leaving office.

These include consultant posts with the Rothschild banking group, the Swiss publishing house Ringier and a speaking job with the New York-based Harry Walker agency at dlrs 60,000 a speech. 

"I cannot help finding it slightly undignified when an elder statesman is so exclusively preoccupied with making money" senior Social Democrat MP Hans-Peter Bartels said yesterday.

Mr Schroeder has dismissed the criticism.

Yesterday he stressed that the pipeline project was of strategic significance for Germany and Europe.

- INDEPENDENT