GERMANY:IN A move that is likely to exacerbate important divisions in Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD), its leader, Kurt Beck, has said alliances with the reformed communist Left Party are no longer taboo.
His comments are also likely to provide political ammunition for the party's Christian Democrat rivals, who will be delighted to tar the SPD with the ex-communist brush. Mr Beck said alliances with the Left Party would soon be a common feature of regional politics in Germany, while federal co-operation in Berlin remains a more distant reality.
"There is no basis for a co-operation at the moment but this is not a dogmatic position, rather one based on political content," said Mr Beck yesterday. "Political parties have to adapt to new political situations or be hamstrung."
Before any federal co-operation is possible, he said, the Left would have to revise several key policies, such as its demand for German withdrawal from Nato and its opposition to EU common security policy. For all his denials, however, Mr Beck's remarks have, for the first time, put a perspective on political co-operation between the SPD and the Left Party. The party, with its roots in the East German Socialist Unity Party, has transformed itself from a regional force into a national player after winning over western SPD members disillusioned with the reforms of the Schröder era.
The SPD had refused point-blank a policy of political co-operation with the Left until last week, when party officials in the western state of Hesse said they would take office with Left support after a deadlocked election result.
"We have a completely new situation in Germany - a five-party political landscape - and all the old coalition habits are being put to the test," said Thomas Fischer, political scientist with the Bertelsmann Foundation.
The SPD is not the only party breaking taboos: after winning a state election in Hamburg last month, the Christian Democrat leaders have begun coalition talks with their ideological arch-rivals in the Green Party.
Just how the SPD deals with its new left-wing rival may decide Mr Beck's future as party leader. His first plan to sideline the Left Party - by revisiting the SPD's left-of-centre roots - alienated the SPD's centrist and conservative wings and influential figures such as foreign minister Frank Walter Steinmeier and federal finance minister Peer Steinbrück.
Mr Steinbrück has complained to friends at the weekend that the SPD's zig-zag approach to the Left Party meant the party has "handed [ Angela] Merkel next year's general election on a plate".