Germany, whose Chancellor acted as though he was married to French President Jacques Chirac, now regrets its diplomatic breach with Britain and the US and will start distancing itself from French foreign policy:

Germany is seeking to distance itself from France's tight embrace and realign itself more closely to Britain and America, senior German officials signalled yesterday. They said the row with Washington over Iraq had been "catastrophic" for Berlin and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had become "a prisoner" of President Jacques Chirac's campaign to oppose the war to topple Saddam Hussein last year.

After two years of standing so close to France that the two leaders literally stood in for one another at EU conferences, the Germans have belatedly discovered the world doesn't love the French. Now that the Chirac administration is buried in scandal and especially since Germany found out that French opposition to the war in Iraq had more to do with salaries than scruples, Germany wants to make nice with the Anglo-American alliance. They've even begun to entertain the possiblity of supporting the Coalition in Iraq, perhaps even with troops.

All of this is welcome, of course, but it had better be accompanied by some public statements of support for the efforts of Britain and the US to rid the world of a dangerous and unstable tyrant. Schroeder made enough reckless statements getting himself elected on the anti-Great Satan platform; until he renounces this publicly, he's not to be trusted and we should start building relationships with his political opponents instead.

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