Enlarge imageBy Erik Kirschbaum
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany’s Social Democrats will wait a week before deciding whether to enter talks on a "grand coalition" to resolve the political stalemate after last week’s election, party Chairman Franz Muentefering said on Sunday.
Muentefering said he hoped this decision would allow "jostling and speculation" to die down.
Since the election a week ago, in which neither Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) nor the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) won a majority for its preferred coalition, tension has grown between the two major parties over who will lead the next government.
Schroeder and conservative leader Angela Merkel, who has a three-seat advantage in parliament but fell short of an overall majority, each claimed the right to lead Germany after the vote.
Advertisement starts
Advertisement ends
Schroeder based his claim on a strong comeback and his personal popularity in opinion polls.
Neither side has so far been able to lure away the other’s junior partner to make up the numbers for a three-party majority coalition, leaving it up to the two main parties to try to reach a deal for a "grand coalition" with each other.
Muentefering said he and Schroeder would hold a "sounding out" meeting with Merkel and CDU leaders on Wednesday but would not decide on whether to move forward to full-scale negotiations about forming a coalition until after next Sunday.
Muentefering said he would wait until after a by-election in Dresden on October 2 that was triggered by one candidate’s death.
"After the sounding-out meeting, and after the by-election in Dresden, it will be decided whether we can go on to negotiations with the conservatives," Muentefering said. "All the jostling and speculation are not helpful now."
The members of the new parliament must take their seats by Oct 18, but it could take longer for the impasse to be resolved.
A "grand coalition" between Merkel’s CDU, its Christian Social Union sister party and the SPD has emerged as a leading option after the junior partners on both sides rejected offers for complex three-way coalitions.
The SPD won 34.3 percent of the vote, while the CDU/CSU won 35.2 percent in Germany’s most inconclusive post-war election.
NO BACKING DOWN
Neither side showed any sign of backing down from its claim to the chancellery, although a key SPD deputy floated an unprecedented plan to rotate the top job, with Schroeder ruling for two years before handing over to the CDU at mid-term.
Several CDU leaders rejected that idea and said the only way the conservatives would only agree to "grand coalition" negotiations was if the SPD dropped its claim on the chancellery, a demand that Muentefering promptly dismissed.
However, small cracks have begun to appear in the SPD camp, even though the party’s loyalty to Schroeder is high after his comeback helped many save jobs that they thought were lost.
Kurt Beck, SPD state premier in Rhineland-Palatinate, appeared to distance himself from Schroeder’s insistence that a "grand coalition" could only be formed with him as chancellor.
The CDU state premiers of Hesse, Lower Saxony and Saxony all said the conservatives would not take part in coalition talks until the SPD withdrew its claim to the chancellery.
"The CDU has the right to name a chancellor," said Hesse state Premier Roland Koch. "The SPD are not yet ready to accept that. Schroeder has made them his emotional hostage."
That demand followed comments from SPD deputy Johannes Kahrs, who said the job-share plan between Schroeder and Merkel appeared to be the most promising way out of the logjam.
German television reported that Schroeder favoured such a rotation modelled on a 1984-88 Israeli government led by Shimon Peres and then Yitzhak Shamir.
