SPIEGEL in-depth interview with the future managing director of the IMF, Horst Köhler, on the resistance of the USA against his nomination and the future role of the IMF

“Today, in the age of the Internet, one thing is crucial: sheer speed. How quickly can I set up a company? How quickly can I put together a team? In Germany things are slowed down by the periods of giving notice and the immobility of the Germans. … You can’t just say: I have 10,000 old application programmers who have learnt COBOL or something, let’s go out and retrain them. I wouldn’t try to do that. Software engineers have to get used to staying on the ball by themselves. … We need all sorts of different people for completely new jobs. At the moment engineers are developing programs or Internet solutions. As soon as those are in place, a team will have to be set up to provide the service. … Completely new professions are being created. That’s why one must not only concentrate on the Green Card for programmers.

“It Can Go off with a Bang at any Moment”

SPIEGEL in-depth interview with Croatian president Stipe Mesic on the threat of a further war in the Balkans, the duty of the West to intervene against Milosevic and his own country’s path towards the EU and Nato:

“The probability of there being another war in the Balkans is high. … As yet, the international community, the Europeans could still take preventative measures to avert any new threat of war in plenty of time. … The powder keg of Montenegro could blow up very easily. And playing about with fire in Macedonia is not that difficult either … But Kosovo and the Albanian-inhabited valleys in the south of Serbia will continue to be the main centre of conflict. … The West must give a very clear signal: Milosevic, if you intervene militarily in Montenegro, your days will be numbered. It won’t do any longer for this man who has circumvented the Dayton peace agreement for Bosnia over the past years, who is responsible for the Kosovo tragedy and who is still goading on the Serb population against the Albanians, to just carry on unchecked. … The Croatian economy is bankrupt, we are lagging behind our neighbours Slovenia and Hungary. In addition, we have a Mafia in our country which is growing rampant in all our institutions. The Americans have promised that we will soon gain Nato membership, and we are going to radically reorganise the structure of our army. And by the end of my term in office, in five years’ time, we are hoping to slip into the structures of the EU as well.

“In Icy Silence”

Scandals: Romano Prodi, president of he European Commission, has long been regarded as Italy’s Mr. Clean. But new documents cast doubt on this: did the former business manager and head of state allow himself to be corrupted? Is Prodi even involved in a billion dollar scandal? Contracts signed by Prodi, negotiation records about contracts for Prodi protégés, confidential reports by a special unit of the fiscal authorities, the investigation report of the economics department of the state police, internal reports for the Roman judiciary – DER SPIEGEL now has access to numerous, previously unpublished documents raising grave new questions about Prodi.

“So Many Tasty Morsels”

Scandals: The 4500 strong corps of the Stasi Hauptabteilung III, in charge of bugging telephones in West German, was the star of procurement in Erich Mielke’s empire. Over the years the telephone lines of some half a million West Germans were under surveillance. Even shortly before the end of GDR, 40,000 were still affected. Only a few initiates know that the Gauck Behörde which looks after the Stasi records still has masses of records compiled by the East German spies. An inventory was taken on February 15th of this year. In the central archives in Berlin alone, the carefully typed transcripts fill 170 metres of shelf-space. No one knows who and what is to be found in them. 50,000 transcripts haven’t even been opened yet by the archivists. In addition there are thousands of tapes and cassettes containing the conversations of the victims. There is still some controversy over whether the Stasi material can only be used against East German but not against West German politicians.

“Inca King versus Sun God”

Peru: The coming Sunday Peru’s bizarre autocrat Fujimori hopes to be elected as president for the third time – but democratic resistance is growing. Peru’s presidential elections are not just any old elections – they have become a decisive battle of democracy in Latin America. In these last few days before the elections, the eternally dusty city of Lima is like a powder keg, and every other person is holding a lighter. Students are burning flags outside the palace. Fujimori’s supporters are beating up opposition candidates. In anonymous leaflets, rebellious officers are announcing that they would not accept “Fujimori’s unlawful re-election”. They are backing his challenger, one on whom many hopes are pinned: Alejandro Toledo, 54, a professor of economics from Lima. There are also murmurs of “Toledo” among Fujimori’s traditional voters, the poor. Because the new face is that of a native Indian – he is like them, like 80 percent of the population. Now it’s a matter of cholo versus chino, the Indian against the Chinese.

“The War of the Mice”

Cyberwar: A secretly convened government team sees an “entirely new type of threat” as emanating from the Internet: the government, it says, must be prepared for “warlike conflicts”. The experts warn against politically extremist or mercenary hackers carrying out large-scale electronic attacks on behalf of criminal organisations or hostile countries. The attacks could be aimed at the entire civilian infrastructure of the country, such as the power supply, the health care system or the police. The experts are particularly worried that the cyberwar could be conducted from anywhere in the world.

“A Foot in the Door”

Inspection of records: New civil rights in three German states are supposed to produce a transparent system of administration. The right to inspect one’s records is meant to put an end to the pre-democratic secretiveness in German public offices and produce a transparent state administration. Now a sect is using the law to try and sound out the public authorities. Their goal is clear: the Scientologists want to find out what facts public authorities and organisations have been able to collect about them. The Kiel data protection officer say that the fears voiced by the chambers of commerce regarding the confidentiality of company details being “in massive danger” are unfounded. The law specifically requires that applications for inspection of records have to be turned down if they jeopardise corporate or business secrets worthy of protection.

“Leafing through the Brain”

Medicine: Today electrodes in the brain can already help patients suffering from Parkinson’s or chronic pain. Experts are predicting a wonderful future for the “brain pacemaker”. This procedure represents a great step forward compared with the radical surgical treatment of Parkinson’s that was in use for a long time. In that intervention surgeons would cook the relevant areas of the brain at high temperatures to stop their malfunctioning. If they burnt away too many grey cells by accident, patients suffered from slurred speech or other side-effects after the operation – for the rest of their lives, since brain tissue that has once been frizzled away can never be brought back to life. By contrast, the rounded tip of the electrode does not damage any nerve fibres. If the operation has undesirable effects, the “brain pacemaker” can be removed again. The brain then returns to its previous state. Already, some researchers are considering a much greater range of uses for the brain pacemaker: the treatment of mental disorders. Surgical interventions for treating the mind fell into disrepute a long time ago, but this new, comparatively low-risk technique could overcome that taboo.

“Valley of Tears in Königswinkel”

Musical: With the premiere of “Ludwig II” on the coming Friday, the German musicals scene is at last coming of age. The lyrical drama about the legendary Bavarian king mixes nostalgic euphony, natty dance numbers and rustic folklore to create a future box-office hit. In Füssen in the Allgäu, His Majesty will be resurrected once again next Friday, with all the luxury, pomp and circumstance of modern-day music marketing.

“Cartilage’s Stand-in”

Injuries: Until now, the rule was that without a meniscus in your knee you were bound to develop arthrosis eventually. US doctors are now replacing the joint buffer by an artificial implant. This is the product of research being conducted on the frontier between biological and material sciences – and the successful attempt to imitate human tissue and organs by biotechnological means. The body is stimulated to repair itself.