Lunch With the FT: 52 Classic Interviews (32 page)

Merkel’s stolid thesis reflects the extraordinary pro-tax consensus of the German political leadership: there is little difference here between Merkel, Schröder or Fischer. And without the tax card to play, Merkel is stuck arguing for labour market deregulation and programmes that would increase incentives to return to work. That’s nice, but these steps are not sufficient to restore ailing Germany. Nor do they make great billboard copy.

Still, it is foreign policy that matters most this morning and here Merkel, with her unabashed embrace of the US, has established herself as a true radical and one of the minority.

This very week, Mike Moore’s
Stupid White Men
, a parody-attack on the Bush administration, tops
Der Spiegel
’s non-fiction bestseller list. Moore’s film,
Bowling for Columbine
, which confirms every prejudice
about US society a German might dream up, is doing pretty darn well too. Many Germans, especially eastern Germans – a great number voted for Schröder last autumn – will think she’s like Tony Blair. If he is the lapdog, she is the Schnauzer of the ‘Amis’.

The Merkel position is not even uniformly popular within her own party. This is something her rivals will try to exploit. Their goal would be to bump her up to candidate for the ceremonial presidency post, while reserving the powerful chancellor job for themselves.

Still, while Merkel may be a national exception, she is not necessarily a regional one. It was the central European nations, after all, that joined Spain in signing the Bush letter. In central Europe, pro-American sentiment is strong, and not especially party-political. Thus, for example, in neighbouring Poland opinion polls show citizens supporting the US to the same numbers that Germans reject it.

Even as Merkel finishes up at the Hotel Palace, the Polish prime minister Leszek Miller (head not of the conservative but the post-communist party) is arriving in Washington to meet President Bush and show his support. Topic A of the meeting: relocating some of the US military to Polish bases from German ones. For both Poles and the US, this prospect is delicious: no more nasty demos at Ramstein or Frankfurt. Just peace and quiet near Krakow.

The atmosphere within Germany may be changing as well. Earlier this month, voters abandoned Schröder’s Social Democrats in droves in two big state elections. Polls suggested the economy was the main factor behind their shift, but Schröder’s explicit peace-at-any-price line did not carry his party either.

Public opinion will probably move toward the US the moment an Iraq war is launched. Much, of course, depends on what happens in Iraq. In other words, Germany remains both isolated and in play. Its foreign policy confronts challenges not only from outside, but, as Merkel proves, from within.

7 JULY 2001

Star status, world travel and controversy may have come with the job, but Queen Rania of Jordan would prefer to stay at home with her children

By Roula Khalaf

Queen Rania’s chief of protocol greets me at the River Café and tells me she is stuck in the Hammersmith traffic. ‘If she knew her way around, she would get out and walk,’ he assures me.

When the grey Mercedes enters the driveway half an hour later, Jordan’s tall, riveting beauty steps out. She apologizes as we make our way to a table in a shady corner of the garden.

She seems in a hurry and suggests we order promptly. ‘I hope they have good desserts,’ she says – a surprising remark given her tiny waist. Only nine months ago, she gave birth to daughter Selma, her third child. ‘You lose weight quickly after the third child,’ she explains. ‘And I work out.’

I stare at her – as do many around us – as she studies the menu. Her white Céline trouser suit and small diamond-studded earrings seem fit for smart royalty. But the camouflage top is the taste of a fashion-conscious 30-year-old. A few lines are visible under her huge brown eyes; the shiny eye-shadow is definitely superfluous.

Rania, brought up in a middle-class Palestinian family, has won sudden stardom as the youngest queen in the world.

‘Being the youngest queen doesn’t mean anything,’ she says, as she settles on a safe bet of mozzarella salad, grilled sea bass and sparkling mineral water. ‘Being young is temporary.’

She maintains the same confident, no-nonsense style throughout the lunch, as she displays her two personalities – the queen who speaks seemingly well-rehearsed lines with a US accent and the more spontaneous working mother who attempts to juggle family life and a hectic job and peppers her talk with Arabic expressions.

As she nibbles on a piece of bread, she tells me that King Abdullah – ‘my husband’, as she refers to him – took the children that morning to buy toys (she does not mention that he was due to meet British prime minister Tony Blair that day).

The rest of the family met her in London for a short break, following a trip to the US, where Rania attended the congressional launch of a bill providing $155m to the US Agency for International Development for microfinance projects around the world.

Her star status and interest in microfinance, the main activity of a foundation she runs, have turned her into the unofficial spokeswoman for the industry – a role the Business Administration graduate from the American University in Cairo seems keen to highlight.

‘In a country like ours where we have unemployment, where we want people to be more self-reliant and not count on the government to create jobs for them, microfinance can be part of a solution,’ she says. ‘It’s also excellent for women. The majority of borrowers in Jordan are women and they gain confidence, become in control of their lives.’

There is, surprisingly, no hint of inexperience in her fast talk, even though she was thrust into the limelight in controversial and unexpected circumstances. The late King Hussein altered the course of the succession shortly before his death two years ago, removing his brother Hassan as crown prince and appointing Abdullah, his eldest son.

Also awkward was that her mother-in-law, the glamorous Noor, retained her title as queen – a move the late king insisted upon. ‘There is no tension between us,’ insists Rania, denying rumours of a family feud. ‘It’s very normal to have gossip about this. People come and go into positions. I understand this and she understands this – and I’m not a jealous person.’

Much of Rania’s focus seems to be on helping push forward King Abdullah’s agenda of modernizing a desert kingdom with a struggling economy. She travels around the country to open new computer centres in schools – one of her husband’s key projects. And, like him, she is often abroad.

But while the couple may be toasted in the west as a model of modern leadership in the Arab world, they are criticized at home for spending too much time away. Some people ask whether the royal family is more concerned with its international image than Jordan’s problems.

‘When people see me and King Abdullah, they see Jordan,’ says Rania. ‘In this global community we live in, if you don’t have your agenda on the world scene, you don’t get the attention.’ In fact, she adds, ‘if you ask me what I hate most about my job, I’d say it’s the travelling. I’d love to stay in Jordan, with my three kids, in my house.’

Perhaps because the king is untouchable, any disapproval of the royal couple has been targeted at Rania.

As we move on to the second course, I glance at her khaki handbag and ask how she feels when she is called the ‘handbag’ queen in the fancy salons of Amman, the Jordanian capital.

‘Of course I shop, every woman shops, and everything in my wardrobe I bought because I need to be involved in every aspect of my life,’ she says. ‘Labels will come and go, but the most important thing is not to feel victimized. It just comes with the territory.’

It is easy to be a popular leader, she says. ‘But those who follow public opinion all the time sometimes make the weakest leaders.’

Is this not a time when the monarchy in Jordan might want to make an effort to win popular approval for the sake of stability? Since the Palestinian uprising against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip erupted last year, neighbouring Jordan has faced concerns of a spillover.

Most of the kingdom’s population is of Palestinian origin and it complains of discrimination in politics and public service. Jordan’s 1994 peace treaty with Israel – never favoured by the local population – has become increasingly difficult to defend.

The government has appeared to raise tensions through a ban on anti-Israeli demonstrations and a brief decision last month to restrict access to Palestinians from the occupied territories.

‘People have the right to express themselves but we’ve had enough demonstrations. The trouble with them is that they’re not peaceful and they turn into non-productive situations,’ says Rania, toeing the official line. ‘And if you’re in the UK and you see demonstrations in Jordan, the tourists won’t go.’

Jordan, she says, can only help the Palestinians in the territories if it is strong and stable.

While Rania’s Palestinian origins were once thought an asset to the king, they have become controversial. During a soccer match last year, supporters of the Jordanian team called on the king to take a Jordanian wife.

Rania is unperturbed when the subject is brought up. ‘When I came, people started saying that I’ll bring the two people together, but I think the fact that I’m married to the king means that the two people are already together.

‘Now we have an uprising and people are using me as a symbol of what’s going on. There will always be some people who will say I’m not Palestinian enough and others who will say I’m not Jordanian enough, no matter what I do.’

As a chocolate cake with caramel ice-cream is placed before her – chocolate is ‘one of my major vices’ – we talk about Tulkarm, the West Bank town her family comes from and where her grandmothers now live under Israeli economic blockades.

She has not been there recently.

An aide approaches to remind her she is due at another appointment. Half the cake is left on the plate when she rises to leave.

That evening, she was to attend the dinner of the Osteoporosis Foundation of which she is the international patron. I learn later that it was the event where the Prince of Wales publicly kissed Camilla Parker Bowles for the first time. I am kissed, too – as she leaves, the queen places three kisses on my cheeks, as is the Arab tradition, and says she hopes we will keep in touch.

11 FEBRUARY 2011

Intimidating? Mistaken? Repentant? Not me, says the controversial former US defense secretary over an austere lunch that takes in Saddam, score-settling and the Super Bowl

By Gideon Rachman

On a silent Sunday afternoon in Washington DC, I am sitting at a table in the restaurant of the Mayflower Hotel, waiting to be joined by one of the most controversial men in recent American history. Donald Rumsfeld was defence secretary for George W. Bush and, along with the president himself, became the public face of the invasion of Iraq. He left office at the end of 2006, three years into the conflict, reviled both by opponents of the war and by many of its most ardent backers.

For the anti-war movement, Rumsfeld had become the face of a cruel and misconceived conflict. He was the man whose reaction to looting in Baghdad – ‘stuff happens’ – was regarded as the epitome of a callous disregard for the consequences of the invasion. But for many of the war’s strongest advocates, Rumsfeld had become the scapegoat for everything that had gone wrong in the early years of the war. He was accused of pig-headedly refusing to send enough troops to fight the conflict and of neglecting the vital task of nation-building in Iraq.

Now, four years after his resignation, Rumsfeld is publishing his own account of events, entitled
Known and Unknown
. The Café Promenade, where we are meeting, is situated in the Mayflower, one of Washington’s grandest hotels. This is no ordinary hotel café – it has marble pillars,
thick carpets and a huge chandelier. At 12.30, there are just three other diners in a room that could easily seat a hundred.

Rumsfeld arrives bang on time and greets me with a disconcertingly warm smile. He is dressed formally in a grey suit, pale blue shirt and striped tie. He sits down and swiftly asks me a question: ‘Have you read the book? What was your reaction?’

I say that I have read most of the book on the flight over from London and that I had enjoyed it – particularly the early chapters about his life growing up in suburban Chicago and his memories of selling newspapers, carrying the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Rumsfeld laughs with apparent pleasure – and points out that, at the age of 78, he has been alive for a third of the entire history of the United States. ‘You multiply my age three times and it takes you back to 1776 … Isn’t it amazing. It’s a third of American history.’ For 54 of those years he has been married to his wife Joyce and the couple have three children.