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German conservatives assail government's nuclear plans |
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April 17, 2000
BERLIN, APR 16 (AP) - Seeking to move beyond a campaign financing scandal, Germany's conservatives broadened their attack on the government Sunday and took aim at its plans to phase out nuclear power.
Angela Merkel, the newly elected head of the main opposition Christian Democrats, said in an interview with Welt am Sonntag that the government's strategy was "wrong," partly because it ignored concerns by the opposition and Germany's states.
Edmund Stoiber, leader of an allied Bavarian rightist party, told the same newspaper "we have agreed to pull out all the stops" against Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's effort.
Schroeder has given power companies until the summer to negotiate a schedule to shut down Germany's 19 nuclear power plants. Otherwise, the center-left government says it will legislate a phaseout.
With Merkel's election last week, the Christian Democrats are now trying to rebound from the crushing scandal set off by former Chancellor Helmut Kohl's admission that he accepted illegal donations for the party.
The conservatives have already assailed Schroeder's tax and economic policies, saying they have helped weaken the euro.
Turning to nuclear power, Merkel and Stoiber accused the government of ignoring concerns about a phaseout by states that are shareholders of power companies. Most German states are conservative-ruled.
Merkel also said scrapping nuclear power would force Germany to turn to other types of electricity that would keep the nation from meeting international goals on curbing pollution.
"Whoever tries to tell people we can make it with renewable energy sources in the foreseeable future is lying," she told Welt am Sonntag.
Schroeder's government, which includes the environmentalist Greens, made shutting down nuclear plants an official policy goal when it came to power 1 1/2 years ago.
The governing coalition wants reactors to go off-line after they have run for 30 years - about 10 years sooner than the industry. The last plant would shut down in 2019 under the government plan.
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