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German Greens end coalition talks with Merkel

Posted on: Friday, 23 September 2005, 06:46 CDT

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's environmentalist Greens ended coalition talks with Angela Merkel's conservatives on Friday, making a "grand coalition" between her CDU party and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats more likely.

The Greens said they saw no basis for cooperation with a party they called "neo-liberal" and "anti-ecological."

Merkel said her Christian Democrats would now focus on talks with Schroeder's center-left SPD aimed at forming a coalition between the two biggest parties in parliament.

Germany's political parties are holding initial talks with each other to assess the viability of various coalition governments after the country's election on Sunday gave no major party a majority with its preferred coalition partner.

Green party leaders Reinhard Buetikofer and Claudia Roth said Sunday's result showed there was no majority in Germany for the conservatives' "neo-liberal, radical market, anti-ecological policies,"

"We see no chance of recommending further exploratory talks to our party's executive," Buetikofer said.

With no party able to form a government, attention has focused on the tortuous coalition negotiations, which are expected to take several weeks at least and which some observers have said could last until Christmas.

Until they are resolved, Schroeder will continue as caretaker chancellor.

The Greens' rejection of overtures from the CDU leaves a grand coalition as the most likely outcome and greatly lessen prospects of a so-called "Jamaica coalition" with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP).

That option -- named after the black, yellow and green colors of the three parties, which match the colors of the Jamaican flag -- was already seen as an outside possibility given the wide differences between the Greens and the other two.

Merkel, speaking to reporters after the meeting with the Greens, said the talks had been conducted in a cordial atmosphere but that there was evidently no basis for further meetings, at least for the moment.

She said the door had not been permanently shut to further talks with the Greens at a later date.

"The option is definitely still open and we're just going to continue with the process," she said.

Merkel and Schroeder met on Thursday for exploratory talks and agreed to meet on Wednesday to continue discussions. Apart from policy differences, they both insist that they would not enter a coalition unless they are in charge as chancellor.

The talks came on the same day that a survey by the Emnid poling institute which showed that 47 percent of Germans wanted Merkel in the Chancellery against 44 percent who preferred Schroeder.

Source: REUTERS

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