A German government spokesman yesterday denied newspaper reports that the Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, is about to drop his finance minister, and sources in Dr Kohl's party said he would choose his own time for a cabinet shuffle. The Bild am Sonntag weekly quoted sources close to Dr Kohl as saying he was annoyed that Mr Theo Waigel had gone public with his desire to leave the finance ministry next year and would grant the wish now.
The conservative Welt am Sonntag said a reshuffle would take place before an election in the state of Hamburg on September 21st. But a government spokesman in Bonn said: "The government denies the reports . . . They are part of the series of false speculation".
This is "a new contribution in a series of erroneous speculation", a government spokesman said. On Friday and Saturday, the government already denied earlier reports of an imminent change in government.
Senior officials in Dr Kohl's Christian Democrats (CDU), who declined to be named, said they doubted the Chancellor would make changes that were first reported in newspapers.
They said Dr Kohl was indeed looking to change his cabinet at some point, but was not about to let others dictate his actions.
The newspaper reports said the CDU parliamentary leader, Mr Wolfgang Schauble, would replace Mr Waigel and head a "super ministry", combining the finance and economics portfolios.
Bild am Sonntag quoted "a close Kohl ally" as saying "a finance minister who announces plans to resign can no longer fight successfully in parliament for tax reform and abroad for a stable euro.
"Kohl believes you shouldn't stop people who want to go," he added.
The political problem was sparked when Mr Waigel said he was tired of the job, particularly thankless as Germany struggles with a huge public deficit, and wanted to leave it next year.
Mr Waigel (58), later said he did not want to quit in 1998. But the half-hearted retreat failed to quell speculation about his future and fuelled a row among the three parties in Dr Kohl's centre-right coalition.
Mr Waigel fanned the flames in an interview with Focus magazine to be published today, in which he says a cabinet shuffle is definitely planned before next year's election.
The dispute has further eroded public support for Dr Kohl's unpopular government.
A survey published in today's edition of the news weekly Der IT]Spiegel shows the opposition Social Democrats (SPD) widening their lead over the CDU.
The survey showed a potential left-wing alliance of SPD and Greens would get 50 per cent support to 41 per cent for Dr Kohl's centre-right coalition.
"Waigel's demands for a reshuffle and his back and forth over the finance ministry have done more to harm the coalition in a few days than all the attacks from the opposition in the last few years," said the Bild am Sonntag columnist Michael Spreng.
With newspapers such as the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung saying Mr Waigel was now a "burden rather than an asset" for Dr Kohl, pressure has been growing on the Chancellor to act when he returns to Bonn today after his summer holiday.