Fischer faces quizzing by opposition

BERLIN, Germany -- German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer faces questioning by political opponents on his alleged role in hitting a policeman during his radical youth.

Fischer, who is to appear as a witness in a trial on Tuesday, faces calls to quit over allegations that he clashed with a policeman during a street battle in Frankfurt in 1973.

Pictures have appeared in German newspapers which are said to be of Fischer starting a fight with a policeman.

Friedrich Merz, parliamentary floor leader of the CDU, said the party will query Fischer in parliament on Wednesday.

The pictures have not only spawned a new fascination with the violent protests of the 1960s and 1970s, but also reminded the nation of Fischer's past as a leader of Frankfurt's student-led left-wing anti-establishment scene of the time.

Fischer said the battle had taken place as police tried to clear squatters from an abandoned house, and that it was the first time he had not run from them.

"I was terribly afraid," Fischer said in an interview with Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "For the first time I saw fear in the eyes of a cop."

German opposition leaders criticised Fischer for his alleged connections with violence and many demanded he resign.

Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democrats (CDU), said Fischer could not remain in the government unless he clearly distanced himself from violence.

"(Chancellor Gerhard) Schroeder has called for decent people to rise up against far-right violence, but he has a vice chancellor who beat up police officers," Merkel told ZDF television. "It doesn't fit."

Roland Koch, conservative premier of Hesse state, where the violence took place, said anyone who had kicked a law officer should not be a government leader.

"Fischer tries to avoid this unpleasant page in his past by saying he can't remember," he said. "Intentionally kicking an officer on the ground shows an attitude you can't gloss over.

He ridiculed Fischer's defence that he had changed his views on violence and the state, saying: "You can't just go out and change your stripes as often as you want...Fischer was an adult, one of the main figures of the movement."

Fischer, as foreign minister and deputy chancellor to Schroeder, has become one of the country's most popular politicians, trading on his irreverent image.

He also earned respect abroad for helping steer Germany through NATO's air war against Yugoslavia over Kosovo.

In particular, he had to overcome stiff resistance from the radical leftist, pacifist wing of his own Greens party, the junior coalition partner to Schroeder's Social Democrats and itself a child of the 1960s student movement.

On Tuesday, Fischer appears as a character witness at the trial of Hans-Joachim Klein who faces charges in connection with Carlos the Jackal's alleged attack on an OPEC oil ministers' meeting in Vienna in 1974.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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