Schroeder 'to bow out of new govt'

According to reports in the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told his conservative counterparts during coalition talks yesterday that he would not join the new government.

“My path in life looks different,” he is reported to have told his CDU challenger Angela Merkel, CSU leader Edmund Stoiber and his SPD colleague Franz Muentefering, according to those present at the talks.