Germany's opposition had to shield its leader, Dr Wolfgang Schauble, from new calls for his resignation yesterday after further revelations about his role in a party funding scandal.
The ruling Social Democrats were also forced on the defensive after a newspaper quoted the former SPD chancellor, Mr Helmut Schmidt, Dr Helmut Kohl's immediate predecessor, as saying he ran secret slush funds to help democratic movements in Spain and Portugal in the 1970s.
Dr Schauble admitted on Monday to a previously undisclosed meeting in 1995 with a fugitive arms dealer, the second time he had changed his story on relations with Mr Karlheinz Schreiber.
The SPD parliamentary floor leader, Mr Peter Struck, called on Dr Schauble to step down, saying his credibility was "absolutely destroyed".
Newspapers usually sympathetic to the conservative CDU agreed Dr Schauble's position as party chairman was no longer tenable.
"Time is running out for this transitional chairman," wrote the conservative Frankfurter All gemeine Zeitung. Party allies rallied round, but acknowledged their leader had landed himself in hot water with the new admission.
"It's a bit awkward, given the current debate," said the CDU general secretary, Ms Angela Merkel, Dr Schauble's deputy and self-appointed leader of CDU efforts to clear up the affair. "But the fact that he had another look in his diary and came clean is, for me, the key point," she said.
Mr Gerhard Schroder's SPD, whose poll ratings have soared since the affair broke late last November, had to defend themselves on Tuesday after the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said the party also had a history of obscure financial practices.
It quoted Dr Kohl's SPD predecessor, Mr Schmidt, as saying his government passed on up to $20 million in secret funds to German political parties during the 1970s, including the SPD and CDU.
The parties were expected to use the cash to ensure that communism did not fill the gap left by the 1974 collapse of the rightwing government of the Portuguese leader, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, and the death of the Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco, in 1975.