The German Finance Minister, Mr Oskar Lafontaine, yesterday described as speculation media reports that he harboured ambitions to take over the post of European Commission president in 2000.
"Rumours are always rumours and speculation," he told reporters outside a sitting of the Bonn parliament. "In fact I'm interested in the Pope's job. You should report that."
Bild and other newspapers claimed that Bonn had made overtures in Paris and other European capitals about a German succeeding the current Commission president, Mr Jacques Santer, at the end of his term. Mr Lafontaine's name was cited as the leading candidate.
On Wednesday the weekly Die Zeit said Bonn had made unofficial approaches in Paris to gauge French reactions to the possibility of a German taking up the post, without specifying Mr Lafontaine.
Political sources in Paris said yesterday that French and German officials were discussing the possibility of jointly nominating Mr Lafontaine.
The nomination would be part of a package of senior European jobs that socialist and social democratic parties, which now govern in 13 of the 15 European memberstates, want to claim in the near future, the sources said.
"We would like to have a common candidate, and this is being discussed at ministerial level," one source said. "We need a president who is more political than Santer."
They did not say whether the idea originated in Bonn or Paris.
"He would be a very good president of the Commission," said an aide to the French Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin.
Mr Jospin's aides denied prior knowledge of the plan while the Finance Minister, Mr Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and the European Affairs Minister, Mr Pierre Moscovici, both close to Mr Lafontaine, sidestepped the issue when asked at a news conference. "The debate is premature," Mr Moscovici said.
The Paris political sources said a Lafontaine nomination would be part of a package including a socialist official to co-ordinate the EU's common foreign and security policy - the job the French call "Monsieur PESC" - and a socialist president of the European Parliament.
"All this is coming up fast," one source said. "Monsieur PESC should be decided at the EU summit in Vienna in December. Santer's successor should be named before the middle of next year, and the European Parliament elections take place then, too."
France's governing Socialists have long preferred Mr Lafontaine to all other social democrats in neighbouring Germany. Until now, however, the front runner for presidency of the commission had been the former Italian prime minister, Mr Romano Prodi.