Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder apologized to President Bush yesterday for the offense caused by a report that his justice minister had compared Bush’s methods to Hitler’s.

The election-eve report in a regional daily angered a US administration already upset about the center-left chancellor’s voluble, and highly popular, opposition to a possible US-led war on Iraq.

Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-

Gmelin tried to calm the trans-Atlantic dispute yesterday by denying the report, but reporters pressed her for more than an hour on what appeared to be not only a breach of a German political taboo, but an affront to Germany’s ally. Boston Globe