Germany's Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, warned yesterday that divisions over the Kosovo conflict could bring down his centre-left coalition government. Pacifists in Mr Fischer's Green Party hope a special delegate conference next month will condemn NATO's military campaign against Yugoslavia and demand an end to German involvement.
Mr Fischer said that "would usher in a different coalition but no different policy".
The Foreign Minister's passionate arguments in favour of NATO's air strikes in the past month have made him Germany's most popular politician. But many Greens are outraged that their party is in a government that is prosecuting Germany's first hostile military action since the second World War.
Opposition politicians called yesterday for the sacking of a Green junior minister, Ms Gila Altmann, who signed a petition advocating an end to the air strikes. The Environment Minister, Mr Jurgen Trittin, was quoted in Washington this week as describing the bombing campaign as a mistake that ought to be put right, but his spokesman later claimed the remarks were a misquotation and that Mr Trittin backed the government's policy.
Mr Trittin's loyalty to the government is crucial because, as the party's most senior left-winger, he might become a natural leader for anti-war Greens. Most of the party's leaders back NATO's campaign as a necessary response to Serbian atrocities in Kosovo.
But on Monday the national executive of the Greens unanimously backed a resolution calling on NATO to consider a "limited, unilateral ceasefire". Mr Fischer insisted yesterday that "a unilateral ceasefire on the part of NATO would mean that Milosevic had prevailed".
The opposition Christian Democrats yesterday ruled out forming a grand coalition with Mr Gerhard Schroder's Social Democrats if the present coalition collapses. Their leader, Mr Wolfgang Schauble, insisted that the Chancellor would have no option but to seek new elections if his Green partners abandoned him.
"If they don't fulfil the commission, they should give it back," he said.
