German minister under fire for anti-terror plans

BERLIN, July 10 (Reuters) German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is facing a storm of criticism for suggesting the country's constitution be overhauled to allow authorities to act pre-emptively against suspected terrorists.

A respected former protege of ex-German chancellor Helmut Kohl and member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), Schaeuble has warned for months that Germany is at risk of attack and needs new laws to confront new threats.

But his attempts to boost police powers, for example by allowing them to monitor the online activities of citizens, have met strong resistance in a country where memories of the Nazis and dreaded East German Stasi secret police are still fresh.

In an interview with weekly magazine Der Spiegel this week, Schaeuble's frustration appeared to bubble over as he lamented that Germany would not even be capable of launching a strike at Osama bin Laden if it knew where he was hiding.

He also pressed for changes in laws to allow pre-emptive detention of suspected militants and said authorities should have the right to prevent people they deem dangerous from using the internet and mobile phones.

The comments have elicited a wave of criticism from members of Merkel's ruling coalition of conservatives and Social Democrats (SPD) as well as opposition calls for his resignation.

''By making such remarks, Mr. Schaeuble has shown himself to be thoroughly unsuitable and should step down,'' Greens leader Claudia Roth told Germany's N-TV television.

Peter Struck, leader of the SPD in parliament and a former defence minister, accused Schaeuble of going on a ''rampage''.

Even members of Schaeuble's CDU joined the fray, with deputy parliamentary leader Wolfgang Bosbach calling targeted killings, even for the likes of bin Laden, more than problematic''.

A Hamburg-based al Qaeda cell was blamed for orchestrating the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings in the United States, but Germany has not suffered a major attack in recent years and polls show the average citizen is more concerned with issues like unemployment than with terrorism.

There was a storm of protest last year, when Schaeuble and other conservatives proposed putting more surveillance cameras in train stations and airports following a failed attempt to detonate crude suitcase bombs on two German trains.

In the magasine interview, Schaeuble described the resistance to stricter controls as a dangerous post-war legacy.

The German constitution, established four years after the fall of the Nazis, puts a premium on protecting German citizens from persecution by the state.

''We no longer live in the world of 1949,'' Schaeuble said.

Last month, German security officials called for increased vigilance against possible terror attacks and said the kind of threat detected before the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings in the United States had resurfaced.

Schaeuble, who has been confined to a wheelchair since an attempt on his life in 1990, said at the time that Germans should be braced for suicide attacks on their soil.

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