Reply #16: Well, he sure don't belong to Bush.

[bemildred]

Schroeder Defends His New Russian Job

After days of silence former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has fired back at critics demanding from him to give up his new job at a German-Russian pipeline project.

"Politicians and the media have spread much nonsense recently," Schroeder told Tuesday's Sueddeutsche Zeitung, a Munich-based daily. "I am only 61 years old; I want to work and not stay at home and get on my wife's nerves."

Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Schroeder last Friday to head the advisory board of the The Northern European Gas Pipeline (NEGP), a German-Russian consortium building an underwater natural gas pipeline from Siberia to Germany. The former chancellor had pushed the project along with Putin during his last weeks in office.

Schroeder's new job, less than a month after he left politics, has sparked outrage in and out of Germany.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Schroeder_Defends_His_New_Russian_Job.html