Germany is struggling to contain an embarrassing debate on the Holocaust as it prepares to join other nations in commemorating the victims of Nazi aggression at Auschwitz.
The far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) provoked outrage last week by walking out of a minute's silence for Nazi victims and referring to Allied strikes on the German city of Dresden in 1945 as a "bombing holocaust".
Now the government, which failed in a previous attempt to ban the party, is under pressure to act, with opposition conservatives pushing for a rapid response.
The debate is raging as President Horst Koehler gets set to join leaders from Poland, France, Russia and Israel at commemorations today to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Interior Minister Otto Schily has decided against another attempt at banning the NPD, which the government has likened to Adolf Hitler's nascent Nazis.
Instead, Mr Schily is trying to garner support for a change in the law that would prevent right-wing extremists from gathering near Jewish and World War II memorials.
But this proposal has also encountered resistance within the ruling coalition of Social Democrats and Greens, with some politicians warning against tinkering with a law they view as sacrosanct.
"We must place a very high value on the right of assembly. Although it is sometimes difficult, we should recognise that even right-wing extremists are protected by our laws," Social Democrat parliamentarian Mr Sebastian Edathy said.
The debate comes at a time when some Germans, particularly in the poorer east, are questioning whether they should be made to feel responsible for atrocities committed over half a century ago.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, the first German leader with no personal memory of the war, said in a speech on Tuesday that Germans bore a "special responsibility" for the Holocaust.
But a survey published in Sternmagazine yesterday suggested 74 per cent of Germans do not feel guilty.