Germany's Greens Split On Power Plan

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Monday July 5 11:25 AM ET 

Germany's Greens Split On Power Plan

BERLIN (AP) - A top leader of the junior party in Chancellor 
Gerhard Schroeder's government today played down threats from 
some of her colleagues to leave the coalition unless plans to wean 
Germany off nuclear power are speeded up.  

Some in the environmentalist Greens party, who are to meet with 
Schroeder on the issue Wednesday, have called the quick closing 
of Germany's atomic power plants a make-or-break issue for the 9-
month-old coalition.  

But Greens co-chairwoman Gunda Roestel said the issue would 
not divide the government.

``We're struggling with this compromise over nuclear policy, and 
nobody expected that that would go without some noise,'' Roestel 
said in a radio interview. But, she added, ``I don't believe at all that 
there's an escalating conflict between the coalition partners.''  

Her comments conflicted with a harsher statement by the other 
party co-chairwoman, Antje Radcke.

``If we don't achieve anything with the exit from nuclear power, then 
what else is there for us in the coalition?'' Radcke said in today's 
BZ newspaper. Ending the use of nuclear power is ``one of, if not 
the central concern of the Greens in the coalition.''  

Winfried Hermann, vice-chair of parliament's environment 
committee, was even more direct: ``If no solution to this problem is 
found, it means the end of the coalition,'' he told the Bild 
newspaper.  

The squabbling over how to bring about an end to nuclear power in 
Germany - one of the goals of Schroeder's government - intensified 
after recent reports that Economics Minister Werner Mueller was 
working on a deal with industry leaders that calls for closing the 
last of the nation's 19 nuclear power plants in 25 years.  

The Greens, who have pressed for a 5- to 10-year phase-out period, 
rejected the plan. And some leading members of Schroeder's 
Social Democrats also want the timetable speeded up.  

Christoph Matschie, chairman of parliament's committee on 
environmental protection and nuclear safety, today called for a
maximum 20-year phase-out.

Schroeder, in a jab at the Greens, said last month that a 25-year 
phase-out would be ``a great success.'' But he has so far failed to 
break a deadlock with industry on terms that would rule out claims 
for government compensation from plant operators.  

Mueller, who is nonpartisan, said in today's Berliner Morgenpost 
that he was willing to consider a compromise with the Greens
that would shut down ``one or the other power plant'' by 2002. But 
he stuck by his basic plan for a 25-year final deadline.

------------------------
Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

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