Coalition govt threatened

The leader of Germany's beleaguered Social Democrats (SPD) warned conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday that a two-year honeymoon period was over for their grand coalition government.

After a long slide in opinion polls, Kurt Beck has been pushing the SPD to the left before a party congress next week and said he was fed up with his party being blamed for coalition failures while Merkel gets the credit for its accomplishments.

(China Daily 10/22/2007 page9)