GERMANY: The German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schröder, has called on Muslims to integrate better into German society, "not stand to one side" and let the country become the battleground for a "clash of cultures". Derek Scally reports from Berlin.
Yesterday, hours after his remarks, more than 20,000 Muslims of German and Turkish origin marched through Cologne under the banner "Hand in Hand For Peace and Against Terror".
"A democracy can not tolerate lawless zones or parallel societies . . . We have to insist that our willingness to integrate is matched by a desire to integrate by those who come to us," said Mr Schröder. Immigrants to Germany must "accept our values of democracy and the enlightenment".
Mr Schröder's comments and yesterday's march mark a new round in Germany's increasingly bitter immigration and integration debate, sparked by the murder in the Netherlands of provocative film-maker Mr Theo van Gogh. Germany is home to over 3.3 million Muslims, largely a consequence of the arrival in the 1960s of immigrant workers.
The belief that the immigrants are gastarbeiter, literally "guest workers", who would one day return to Turkey, has hampered integration efforts. German teachers have warned for years that there was a growing problem where young children of Turkish origin arrived for their first day of school without a word of German. Immigration experts have warned also about a new conservative wave among Muslims, seen in the growing number of young women wearing headscarves.
Yesterday Mr Günther Beckstein, the Bavarian justice minister, called on the Muslim community to help prevent a van Gogh-style attack here. "We have to do everything to prevent a spillover into Germany," he told the Cologne marchers. An "across-the-board prejudice against Islam that compares it to terrorism can have no place in our society", he said.
However, his boss, Dr Edmund Stoiber, the staunchly Catholic prime minister, was less compromising. "We have to be more offensive on this issue. Openness and tolerance yes, Islamic headscarves no." Mr Stoiber called for a "greater defence of the Christian values of our country".
German conservatives demand full integration of immigrants and have little time for Dutch-style multi-culturalism.
But the Green Party, Germany's junior coalition party, remains its staunch defender. "If we start telling immigrants to adhere to a strict 'leading Germany culture', then we are starting a dangerous debate," said Ms Claudia Roth.