Row over red-green-red coalition in Berlin reaches federal government
Culture minister Weimer urges the SPD to stop an alliance with the Left in Berlin. SPD general secretary Klüssendorf hits back. Exploratory talks resume on Sunday.
Archive image · Photo: De-okin (talk) 19:15, 4 March 2010 (UTC) / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped and resized)
Federal culture minister Wolfram Weimer (non-partisan, close to the CDU) has urged SPD leaders Lars Klingbeil and Bärbel Bas to prevent a red-green-red alliance in Berlin. Such a coalition would be a "vote of no confidence in our coalition", he told Bild. Weimer called the Left the "successor to the SED" and warned of a "broken axle for the integrity of the Federal Republic". Instead he wants a coalition of centrist parties in the capital.
SPD general secretary Tim Klüssendorf rejected the intervention, saying anyone speculating about consequences for the federal coalition showed they had "not understood the seriousness of the situation". He pointed to the Union's stance on cooperation with the far right in Saxony-Anhalt. Warnings also came from the Greens: Bundestag vice president Omid Nouripour called Berlin's Left a "security risk", while party co-leader Franziska Brantner demanded personnel consequences, saying agreements on paper were not enough.
The Left, Greens and SPD have been holding exploratory talks since Thursday; on Sunday lead negotiators Steffen Krach (SPD), Nina Stahr (Greens) and Maximilian Schirmer (Left) meet again at the Haus der Statistik. A Left party congress and a small Green congress are then to decide on coalition negotiations. CDU foreign policy expert Johannes Volkmann indirectly argued for a CDU-Greens-SPD alliance. The Left emerged as the strongest party in the Berlin state election.