Rumsfeld 'mends fences' by lumping Germany with Cuba and Libya in an axis of bad boys

"Well, that's Rumsfeld." Those were the words of Joschka Fischer, Germany's Foreign Minister, yesterday on the latest outburst from the US Defence Secretary as he began what one news report optimistically called a "fence-mending" mission to Europe.

The idea of fence-mending by the swaggering Donald Rumsfeld – a former college wrestler and a man described as a "black belt in bureaucratic infighting" – is far-fetched at the best of times. The thought of him doing so on a trip to Germany, where he will attend this weekend's Wehrkunde defence conference in Munich, is beyond credulity.

To offend once might be a slip of the tongue. To do so twice within barely a week suggests you really mean it. And so with Mr Rumsfeld.

A few days after contemptuously dismissing Germany and France as "old Europe" for their temerity in challenging American policy on Iraq, he inveighed against Germany in cavalier style on Wednesday, to a panel of senior congressmen.

A member of the House Armed Services Committee asked what co-operation the Bush administration could expect in the event of war. Mr Rumsfeld listed the good boys, foremost among them Britain, followed by a category of doubters who might reconsider the folly of their ways.

Then the Defence Secretary delivered the punchline. "There are three or four countries that have said they won't do anything. I believe Libya, Cuba and Germany are the ones that I have indicated won't help in any respect." Mr Rumsfeld could hardly have been more wounding. The "old Europe" jibe may have contained a grain of truth. But the second one was a straight lie: Germany may have refused to send its forces to the Gulf but it has promised to make all its logistical facilities available to the US in the event of war.

He topped the untruth by bundling Germany with two of America's enduring foes, Cuba and Libya.

Mr Rumsfeld is not an obvious choice to smooth ruffled feathers. Fortunate indeed the fly on the wall at his private meeting in Munich this weekend with his German opposite number, Peter Struck.

Mr Fischer – fresh from a meeting in Rome with Pope John Paul II – nobly turned the other cheek. Asked about the Cuba-Libya-Germany axis of non-co-operation, he pointed to how much Germany owed to the United States for its democracy and, more recently, for its unity.

Pressed, he would say no more than: "Well, that's Rumsfeld." As far as wobbly allies against Iraq go, Germany is not public enemy number one in America. Despite the comparison of President Bush's tactics with those of Hitler by one minister last year, German officials are thoroughly diplomatic, as befits a country still uncomfortable with throwing its weight around on the world stage.

Not so France, that other founder member of the European "axis of scepticism" on Iraq. France does throw its weight around in a way that irritates the Americans as much as it does the British.

Generally, though, the French have come through when it mattered for the US – in the Cuban missile crisis and in the 1991 Gulf War coalition.

But the Bush administration and its cheerleaders in the press now seem to have concluded that it won't come through this time. The diplomatic ambush of Colin Powell by Dominique de Villepin, the French Foreign Minister, at the UN might have tipped the patient and moderate Secretary of State into the hawks' camp. Among the hawks is Richard Perle, head of the Defence Policy Board, who does not classify France at all as an American ally.

Right-wing columnists are venomous. George Will, described M. de Villepin as "oleaginous" this week, saying he was "exercising the skill France has often honed since 1870 – that of retreating, this time into incoherence". Germany can count itself lucky.