GERMANY: The German Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, has demanded that all legal measures be used to punish members of an extreme-right party who refused to participate in a minute's silence for Holocaust victims.
Mr Fischer said yesterday it was a "disgrace" for Germany that the 12 National Democratic Party (NPD) MPs, whom he called "neo-Nazis", instead left the Saxon state parliament in Dresden in protest on Friday.
The NPD parliamentary leader in Saxony, Mr Holger Apfel, later described the Allied bombing of Dresden in February 1945 as a "bombing holocaust".
The NPD's tactics in Dresden have caused shock and widespread condemnation across Germany ahead of this week's 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
"This embarrasses the image of the federal republic far beyond its borders," said Mr Klaus Uwe Benneter, general secretary of the ruling Social Democrats (SPD), in Berlin.
However, the minister who tried and failed to ban the NPD two years ago has admitted he has no legal tools at its disposal for a second attempt. "I just don't see how it can be done at the moment. For that reason, we must apply ourselves more to a political debate," said Mr Otto Schily, the interior minister.