Congressman Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor who chairs the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee stirred a lot of controversy after he attacked the former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Speaking at the dedication ceremony for victims of communism memorial in Washington, Tom Lantos called Schroeder "a political prostitute, now that he's taking big cheques from (Russian President Vladimir) Putin."

"But the sex workers in my district objected," he quipped.

Lantos' criticism focussed on Schroeder's current 300,000-dollars- a-year job as chairman of the North European Gas Pipeline, which is majority-owned by the Russian state natural gas company Gazprom.

During his speech Lantos attacked also the former French president Jacques Chirac . He said the two leaders had turned their backs to the US and its fight against the next wave of tyranny, Islamic fascism.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier responded by saying that Lantos had overstepped the line of political decency. "This bad lapse of judgement insults not only the former chancellor, but also the huge majority of the German people who rejected the Iraq war with good reason - not the least because of the historic experiences of Germans themselves," Steinmeier said.