Foreign minister to battle Merkel in poll

GERMANY’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) set up an election showdown yesterday, picking foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier to run against chancellor Angela Merkel in elections in 2009.

After a meeting near Berlin of key SPD figures that also saw the unpopular chairman of two years, Kurt Beck, resign, Steinmeier said he would fight to ensure his party would win next September’s vote.

“The party needs a strong leadership and a strong centre and I believe that today’s decisions set the course for this,” said Steinmeier.

Steinmeier said party leaders wanted Franz Muentefering, a close ally of former SPD chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, to return as party chairman to replace Beck.

The choice of Steinmeier, 52 — who is also Germany’s vice-chancellor — will see a battle between the two most senior figures in the ruling “grand coalition” of the SPD and Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats.

However, he has never run for public office and has his work cut out to challenge the country’s popular first female chancellor.