Germany's Schroeder Slams Neo-Nazis by TONY CZUCZKA Associated Press Writer PLAUEN, Germany (AP) -- On his first extended trip Monday through a region blighted by neo-Nazi violence, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called on citizens to stand up to the extreme right following attacks that have left three people dead so far this year. Schroeder's two-week bus trip is a high-profile break with Germany's political routine -- an attempt to connect with people and problems in a region where alienation and a lack of jobs play out most terribly in a growing number of neo-Nazi attacks on foreigners and other minorities. Many eastern Germans feel disadvantaged and frustrated a decade after German unification, which wiped out much of the region's industry and left it with joblessness about twice the national average. It is just this sense of dissatisfaction that caused a spike in neo-Nazi violence in the first two years after reunification and is contributing now to a resurgence. Schroeder emphasized Monday that in 1989, when their protests brought the Berlin Wall down, East Germans displayed the sort of civic courage that political leaders are now trying to foster. Schroeder met with some of the former democracy activists during his stop in Plauen and held them up as an example for all Germans -- east and west. He urged citizens to defend democracy by standing up against ''far-right rowdies'' he said were giving the region a bad name. ''On this trip, I want to make it clear that extreme-right ideas are not purely eastern German,'' he said at an earnest meeting with local officials in this town near the Czech border. ''Without a civic response against right-wing extremism, we won't make it.'' Schroeder promised to continue the federal aid that has topped $470 billion to the region since unification, but he insisted that funding and tough responses from authorities were only part of the answer. Schroeder's 21-stop trip is the most attention any German leader has paid to the east outside an election campaign. Tanned from his summer vacation in Spain, he was at turns jovial and serious during Monday's stops. About 200 people on Plauen's cobblestoned market square cheered as the chancellor arrived at the 14th-century town hall. Mayor Rolf Magerkord led him through an exhibition documenting the 1989 peaceful democratic revolution in Plauen. Schroeder's trip is a highwire act between denouncing extremist attacks, listening to eastern Germans' problems and boosting their morale. He specifically chose smaller towns that his predecessor Helmut Kohl, the ''father of unification,'' never visited. At Plauen City Hall, he urged eastern Germans to take pride in their economic achievements despite high unemployment and the legacy of 40 years of isolation and dictatorship under communism. Magerkord welcomed Schroeder's trip as an attempt to break down mental barriers separating Germans on both sides of the former Cold War divide. He also asked for continued aid and the construction of a high-speed train link into this relatively remote corner of Germany. ''My wish is that you bring east and west closer together, take out some of the strains and make conditions more equal,'' the mayor said. Yet the east's dark side will be on display again Tuesday when three men from the region -- two 16-year-olds and a 24-year-old -- go on trial, charged with beating and kicking to death a Mozambican father of three in the city of Dessau. Authorities say the defendants were motivated by hate of foreigners. The slaying is among the worst in a recent series of right-wing extremist attacks. The violence has unsettled civic leaders and prompted the government to examine whether to ban the far-right National Democratic Party. Schroeder's itinerary reflects the region's successes as well as its demons. Earlier Monday, he visited the spa town of Bad Elster, which has mastered the transition to capitalism thanks to Germans' love of state-subsidized spa visits. He also dropped by a family of clarinet makers, underlining the revival of family businesses after the fall of communism. In Plauen, a town of 70,000 with a lace-making tradition, he stopped at a curtain factory. Other stops before Schroeder returns to Berlin on Sept. 1 include the former Nazi concentration camp Mittelbau Dora and an anti-extremist police task force at Wittenberge, north of Berlin. He also will visit a computer school, take a bicycle tour of a wine region and kick off a soccer game. It was clear even after the first day, however, that it will take more than one trip by the chancellor to convince many of the disaffected that their lot will improve. ''This trip was necessary, definitely,'' said Bernd Kranz, 41, a jobless bus driver who stood outside City Hall to see Schroeder. ''But I don't think it's going to change much even though it's a good sign.'' ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com