It does not mean Berlin has given up hope of improving its fractured ties with Washington -- the transatlantic relationship is much too important, as Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder acknowledges.

But after the fall of Baghdad Berlin is seeking safety in numbers, joining with France and Russia -- two other anti-war campaigners -- and to a lesser extent Britain in urging a central role for the United Nations in post-war Iraq.

He travels Friday to Russia's second city Saint Petersburg for talks with President Vladimir Putin and French President Jacques Chirac.

Then, perhaps more significantly, he will Tuesday host Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, the closest ally of US President George W. Bush and the only one to contribute significant troops to the US-led military action.

Meanwhile German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has just returned from a three-day trip to the Middle East, a region lately overshadowed by the war on Iraq but which Germany fears renewed violence could erupt.

And German Defence Minister Peter Struck will fly to Washington early next month for talks with US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

So Schroeder felt able Thursday to caution the United States not to repeat its military action, amid fears Washington may turn attention next to Iran or Syria.

"Naturally it would be desirable also to have a process of democratisation in other countries," Schroeder told RTL television in an interview.

"But I caution against a repetition. I think that we should be very careful about surmising whether there could be a new war.

"We have no cause even to speculate whether and when there might be a new reason for war. I at least don't see any."

Fischer said Germany wanted a UN resolution underpinning the international effort to reconstruct Iraq after the conflict.

"We want to try all we can to find a common position at the (UN) Security Council," Fischer said.

He said UN legitimacy and upcoming resolutions were "the best way and the most necessary way to secure peace in Iraq." Schroeder has said much the same thing.

But the fact is that for Germany, the glory days of diplomacy -- forging a multilateral approach to the Kosovo conflict in 1999, followed by the December 2001 conference that set a new government for Afghanistan in motion -- appear long gone.

Schroeder's rather undiplomatic tactics -- it was not so much his anti-war principles that so upset Bush as a rhetoric that smacked of electioneering -- sent US-German relations plunging to the point where the two men are not even on speaking terms.

The spectacular failure of the United Nations to agree a common line over Iraq, leaving Britain and the United States to launch military action on their own and effectively accuse the anti-war camp of giving tacit succour to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, has further soured the transatlantic atmosphere.

So Berlin is trying to help forge at least a European consensus, hence the flurry of top-level contacts.

Blair appears to have persuaded a reportedly sceptical Bush to give the UN "a vital role" in Iraq, even if it might not match French and German hopes of an over-arching UN role in shaping the country's political future as well as dealing with its humanitarian needs.

As for fixing the broken US-German relationship, that will come eventually, Schroeder said.

He can point to Germany's interest in the Middle East peace process and its heavy commitment to anti-terror and peacekeeping around the world as examples of Berlin's willingness to pull its weight.

Relations between the two capitals were not "dramatic", he insisted.

"But I don't think we should force ourselves on each other. I have made it clear why we thought it was wrong to wage this war. I stand by that.

"Everything else we'll see about when we speak together, and we will speak together."

SPACE.WIRE