A bitter fight has erupted in Germany\u2019s conservative CDU party over whether they should consider working with the far-right Alternative for Germany in the eastern state of Thuringia.<\/p>\n
Angela Merkel\u2019s party face an invidious choice in Thuringia after recent elections made the building of a stable state government next to impossible.<\/p>\n
Ms Merkel\u2019s CDU only managed to muster 22 percent of the vote, as voters flocked from the centre ground towards parties with links to darker chapters in German history.<\/p>\n
Winners in the state poll were Die Linke, a party set up by apparatchiks of the communist East German regime. Meanwhile the nationalist AfD beat the CDU into third place.<\/p>\n
With the vote split between the far-Left and far-Right, CDU politicians in Thuringia have publicly called for the party to start talks with both fringe parties to try and find a workable government.<\/p>\n
But the CDU leadership in Berlin immediately shut down talk of a deal with the AfD on Tuesday, describing the suggestion as \u201ccrazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Party secretary general Paul Ziemiak told broadcaster ARD that cooperation with the AfD was \u201ca taboo\u201d that cannot be broken.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not talking about tactical games or parliamentary majorities. This is an issue that affects the CDU\u2019s core values,\u201d said Mr Ziemiak.<\/p>\n
While the AfD are controversial nationwide, their Thuringian branch are particularly renowned for extremism. State leader Bj\u00f6rn H\u00f6cke heads a radical faction inside the party called der Fl\u00fcgel which is under observation by domestic intelligence services over its anti-Islam agenda.<\/p>\n
Mr H\u00f6cke, a former school teacher from the west of the country, is believed to have written regular columns for a neo-Nazi magazine under a pseudonym.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Mr H\u00f6cke wrote a letter to the CDU offering an informal cooperation which would involve his party supporting a minority government made up of the CDU and the pro-business Free Democrats.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile on Wednesday, the German government gave itself the green light to continue its work for the next two years.<\/p>\n
Ms Merkel\u2019s government of CDU and Social Democrats had decided to take stock in a \u201chalf-time report\u201d after two years to decide whether enough had been achieved to make further coalition worthwhile.<\/p>\n
The 80-page report found that the government had already achieved two thirds of the goals set out in the coalition agreement signed in early 2018.<\/p>\n