Before addressing 16,000 jubilant supporters in Dortmund, Schroeder wrote an apology to US President George W. Bush after a senior minister reportedly compared the latter's tactics over Iraq to those used by Hitler.

"I would like to say how sorry I am that remarks attributed to the German justice minister may have hurt you," he wrote in the letter.

"The minister has assured me that she did not say the words attributed to her," he added in the letter, which was made public.

He assured Bush: "I can guarantee that anyone who draws a link between the American president and a criminal does not have a place in my government."

The incident has soured German-US relations, which had already been badly holed by Schroeder's outright refusal to join any US-led attack on Iraq even with a UN mandate.

With the main parties neck and neck in the polls, the last thing Schroeder wanted was to have an alleged gaffe by Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin dominate the day's news.

It was a bonus for his rival Edmund Stoiber, whose conservative Christian Union (CDU/CSU) alliance has been wilting in the final weeks of its campaign to oust the chancellor's Social Democrats (SPD).

"Every hour that this unspeakable woman is in office is damaging Germany," he thundered to loud applause at his closing rally in Berlin.

He accused Schroeder of using his anti-war stance on Iraq to win votes at the cost of the cherished relationship with the United States.

The chancellor made no mention of the furore in his closing campaign rally in Dortmund, an SPD bastion in the industrial heart of western Germany.

Like Stoiber, he too confidently predicted victory when the polls close at 6^"Four years of SPD-Greens coalition have moved us forward, but we are not yet there. We want to continue on that path," he said.

The Christian Union "wants to govern but is not capable of it."

Lending their support were newly re-elected Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson, who spoke in German, and Nobel literature laureate Guenter Grass.

In Berlin, Stoiber rallied the faithful with a speech haranguing Schroeder for what he branded as a litany of failure: too much unemployment, crime and immigration, not enough education, nothing for small businesses.

"Our country does not need play-acting, it needs competence," he intoned. Two polls released earlier in the day showed the political mood in favour of Schroeder's SPD, who have governed for the last four years in a coalition with the Greens.

The main poll, for RTL television, showed 38.5-39.5 percent for the SPD to 37-38 percent for the CDU/CSU.

While the survey sought to test the political mood rather than how people might cast their ballot Sunday, the figures correspond closely to what voter intention polls have said for the past two weeks.

There was no indication how Daeubler-Gmelin's reported remarks might play on polling day.

Visibly shaken as she was grilled by reporters for more than an hour, she admitted using the words "Adolf" and "Nazi" in a debate about using war as a method of drawing attention from domestic problems.

However, she insisted she had not meant to compare Bush with a "criminal" and her words had been misquoted by a journalist who was present without her knowledge.

Daeubler-Gmelin also denied reports that she had claimed the United States had "a lousy justice system" and that if laws on insider trading had been in force in the 1980s, when Bush was in the oil business, "he would be in prison today."

US Secretary of State Colin Powell called German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer to voice his "outrage" at the reported statements, a State Department spokesman said.

(China Daily September 21, 2002)