Chancellor's party edges up poll

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was squaring off today with his challengers in their last debate before Germany’s election as a new poll showed his Social Democrats continuing to edge forward.

The ARD television debate pits Schroeder and his Greens party ally foreign minister Joschka Fischer against conservative Christian Democrat leader Angela Merkel and Edmund Stoiber, the head of her party’s Bavaria-only sister group, the Christian Social Union.