Germany:The gloves have finally come off in Germany's grand coalition government after a regional row over juvenile crime boiled over into a slanging match in Berlin.
Christian Democrat (CDU) state governor Roland Koch sparked the row by claiming during his re-election campaign in Hesse that Germany had "too many young foreigner criminals" who, he said, were responsible for "half" of all juvenile crimes.
After a brutal attack on a Munich pensioner by two young men, a German-born Turk and a Greek, Mr Koch suggested it was time to tighten up juvenile crime laws and, where necessary, deport "foreign" criminals.
His remarks have been attacked by Social Democratic Party (SPD) leaders, criminologists and immigrant groups. "It's a disgrace that he opens his mouth and suggests that it is 'foreigners' who are responsible for crime," said SPD leader Kurt Beck.
SPD parliamentary leader Peter Struck went further, claiming Mr Koch was "thrilled" that the Munich attack gave him a chance to run a right-wing populist campaign like the one that brought him to power in 1999.
When CDU leaders demanded he apologise, Mr Struck replied: "The CDU can kiss my ass."
CDU leader Angela Merkel is in a difficult position: she has no great love for Mr Koch or his populist election campaigns.
But retaining Hesse, and two other CDU-controlled states in elections next month, is crucial for her authority as party leader. However, that in turn is doing irreparable damage to the CDU-SPD political marriage of convenience in Berlin.
Mr Koch's "young criminal foreigner" campaign is a controversial one: statistics show that young criminals without a German passport account for 19.8 per cent of juvenile crime - not "half" as Mr Koch claims. Crime committed by non-German citizens has dropped dramatically, from one-third in 1993 to one-fifth last year.
"Social status is key to juvenile crime, not ethnic background," said criminologist Christian Pfeiffer. "Over a fifth of young men from immigrant families leave school without their final exams."
The Central Committee of Jews in Germany said it was "very disappointed" to see Dr Merkel back a campaign it described as "racism at the level of the [neo-Nazi] National Democratic Party".