West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt did not want Jimmy Carter as U.S. President; in fact, he rooted openly for Gerald Ford during the American election campaign. But Schmidt's discomfort with Carter and his new diplomatic style only explains in part the suddenly acid relations between Bonn and Washington. Last week German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Defense Minister Georg Leber flew to Washington for several days of hard discussion on three policy disputes that divide the two allies. They returned to West Germany in a somewhat better mood than they had arrived in...
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