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BONN - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder blasted the left wing of his Social Democrats on Saturday for criticising him and damaging the party ahead of a series of state elections later this year.
Ending his week-long silence over a chorus of criticism from the SPD's left wing, Schroeder said the assaults on his attempts to rejuvenate and modernise the party were dangerous and counterproductive.
He also said in an interview with Der Spiegel news magazine he was not worried about the SPD's slumping popularity in opinion polls ahead of five state elections in September and October, where the SPD is facing a series of ugly defeats.
"The next federal election isn't scheduled until the fall of 2002," Schroeder said when asked about voter surveys showing his SPD would now be trounced by the opposition Christian Democrats, currently about 12 points ahead of the SPD.
"By that point the voters will have had a concrete chance to measure what we have accomplished, whether we have fulfilled our promises or whether we have failed," he said.
Schroeder, who has tried to wrench the SPD away from its traditional leftist base towards the political centre, has run into sniper fire from the SPD left wing led by Saar state premier Reinhardt Klimmt.
Saar, a small western state, has elections on September 5 and the SPD, trailing the CDU in voter surveys, faces its first loss there since 1985.
Klimmt, trying to score points with local voters, has openly assailed Schroeder for scrapping the SPD's social welfare policies and called for a luxury tax on affluent Germans, a tax Schroeder has flatly rejected.
"Some in the left wing of the party are going to have to comprehend that this form of attack will not help the party or help them reach their aims,' said Schroeder, who had tried to ignore the attacks for the last week.
'It's dangerous to constantly discuss in public details of the direction of our programme,' Schroeder said. 'We'll run the risk of worrying voters. The doubts about whether we'll achieve our aims will only be raised.'
A survey by the Dimap polling institute published in Bild newspaper on Saturday showed that 33 percent of the 1,100 voters surveyed would cast their ballots for Schroeder's SPD if an election were held on Sunday.
The CDU would win 45 percent and could form a majority coalition with the Free Democrats, who would take five percent.
Schroeder, who starts a three-week holiday in Italy on Tuesday, also criticised for the first time former Finance Minister and SPD chairman Oskar Lafontaine, who hastily resigned in March and has refused to discuss his reasons with Schroeder.
Schroeder said Lafontaine had been foolish to criticise the central bank, the Bundesbank. He also said he regretted yielding to Lafontaine's left-leaning views during the first six months of his administration.
'I made too many compromises that I shouldn't have made,' Schroeder said of Lafontaine, who as SPD chairman wielded considerable power. 'I thought there was no sense in starting a debate with the Bundesbank. You have no chance of winning that in Germany. But I didn't say anything at the time.'