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US President George W. Bush is scheduled to start a three-day visit to Germany on Wednesday as part of efforts to improve his relations with the leading European country.

 

This will be Bush's first visit to Germany after Chancellor Angela Merkel assumed the leading role in German politics last November. Bush is to arrive late on Wednesday in Merkel's hometown, Stralsund, in the state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.

 

Bush, who is en route to the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, will meet Merkel, Mayor Harald Lastovka and around 1,000 hand-picked citizens in the medieval town.

 

Security personnel from both the US and Germany have been working for weeks in the area. German media reports said some 20 million euros (about US$26 million) had been spent on security for the visit.

 

In Stralsund, streets are deserted, drains have been welded shut and 12,000 police have been mobilized. The security measures have drawn criticism from local residents.

 

As Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is plagued by an unemployment rate as high as 20 percent and a weak economy with little industry, local officials argued that any spending on Bush's security should be paid by the federal government.

 

Harald Ringstorff, the state premier, told local media, "The one who orders the music should pay for it."

 

Bush is also unlikely to receive a warm welcome from many when he arrives. More than 5,000 protesters are expected to turn up in Stralsund to voice their opposition toward the visit, according to the German magazine Der Spiegel.

 

The Left Party is officially going to take part in the protests. The state's environment and social ministers also plan to go.

 

"Indeed, it's tough to find anyone in the state with much positive to say about Bush's visit," Der Spiegel said. It quoted a reader as telling a local newspaper, "He (Bush) represents the most aggressive wing of US politics."

 

In a similar report, the German Deutsche Welle radio quoted local residents as saying that they are not interested in Bush's visit.

 

Engineer Heiko Lawrenz from Stralsund plans to escape to a building site for the day. "You have to be inside from eight in the morning, and cannot open a window or come out until the president leaves," he said.

 

"I cannot make any appointments, and it will be impossible to work," said Eginhard Gieber, the manager of the St Nikolai Evangelical Church Center in Stralsund, who added that Bush's visit made "no sense" given the "enormous poverty in the region."

 

"You could build a whole new children's home with all that money," he said.

 

The hometown visit is part of joint efforts by Germany and the Bush administration to further improve bilateral ties, which had cooled during Gerhard Schroeder's chancellorship.

 

Since assuming power, Merkel has paid two visits to the US.

 

Despite the fact that German public attitude toward the US and Bush remains unchanged, at government level the German-US relationship has begun to shift. At least leaders in Washington and Berlin are no longer finger-pointing.

 

Welcoming Bush, Merkel said in an interview on RTL television on Monday that it was important for him to see for himself the "changes and problems" caused by the reunification of Germany in 1990. She said Bush's trip would help "complete the picture" of the country.

 

However, Merkel, who is more pragmatic than Americans had thought, did not change the substance of Germany's foreign policy.

 

Nile Gardiner and John Hulsman, German experts at the Heritage Foundation, wrote in an article published on the Internet that "The Merkel chancellorship does not herald a fundamental transformation of the US-German relationship."

 

"Some of the most important portfolios in terms of US interests are held by remnants of the Schroeder government, which could barely disguise its contempt for the Bush administration," they said.

 

During their talks, Merkel and Bush are expected to discuss a wide range of issues including the Iran nuclear program, Iraq, the Middle East, Guantanamo prison and others.

 

Merkel has been very critical of the US Guantanamo prison, pressuring Washington to close it. On the issue of the Iran nuclear program, the German government insists that the Bush administration should talk directly with Iran.

 

Bush and Merkel may reach agreements on some issues. But it will be difficult for them to bring any substantial change to German-US relations, as the two powers do not rely on each other today as they did during the Cold War.

 

Gardiner and Hulsman have reminded the Bush administration, "Washington should be under no illusions that the Germany of today is the same as that of Helmut Kohl or Konrad Adenauer," referring to the two chancellors who enjoyed very close relations with the US during the Cold War years.

 

(Xinhua News Agency July 13, 2006)