Steinmeier fights uphill battle

BERLIN, Sept. 21 (UPI) -- German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is fighting an uphill battle in his attempt to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor.

Steinmeier wants to lead his Social Democratic Party, or SPD, into a coalition with the Green Party, but pre-election polls say this combination is light years away from getting a majority in Sunday's federal elections here in Germany.

The Christian Democratic Union of incumbent Merkel leads the polls, and if things work out perfectly for the chancellor, then she might even be able to form a government with her favorite coalition partner, the free-market Free Democrats.

But Steinmeier performed well in a recent TV debate with the chancellor, with some polls naming the foreign minister the winner. That's an accomplishment, because many Germans still haven't warmed up to the 53-year-old, despite his four years as foreign minister.

If Germans could elect the chancellor by direct vote, Merkel would get 53 percent and Steinmeier 30 percent, according to a recent poll commissioned by German public broadcaster ARD.

Steinmeier hasn't been able to shed the image of a backroom politician, and no wonder: He has never had to win an election or sell his policies; rather, he has been known as a smart and efficient diplomat who likes to stay out of the spotlight -- much to the contrary of his mentor, former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Steinmeier grew up in the same region as Schroeder and accompanied him on his rise to power. He joined his staff in 1991 and followed the SPD leader from Lower Saxony to the Berlin chancellery in 1998, which he headed a year later.

The chancellery has lots of competencies, and Steinmeier gained valuable experience deciding on anti-terror policies, the German opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq and Germany's first foreign military deployment to Kosovo.

Steinmeier, Schroeder once said, is the only person in his party who could be chancellor without a day's worth of transition. Schroeder was ousted by Merkel in the 2005 elections, but he garnered enough votes to heave his SPD into a grand coalition government with Merkel's CDU, and Steinmeier into the foreign affairs chair.

Experts say Steinmeier has performed strongly as German foreign minister, but his chances to move up the political career ladder are lessened by the overall problems his SPD is facing.

The party has lost some 30 percent of its members over the past decade, with many longtime supporters alienated by what they feel is an increasingly conservative agenda.

Steinmeier's reputation has been tarnished by the affair surrounding Murat Kurnaz, who was held nearly five years without charges in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

He could have been released as early as 2002, when the Pentagon offered to send the harmless inmate to Germany. But Berlin at the time refused because it deemed Kurnaz a security risk -- an assessment made by a high-profile government group that included Steinmeier.