The German Chancellor, Dr Kohl, will leave office within one year if he wins next month's federal election, according to a report in a Berlin newspaper yesterday.
The daily Tagesspiegel cited senior sources within Dr Kohl's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in support of its claim that the chancellor has promised to make way for the party's parliamentary leader, Mr Wolfgang Schaeuble, before the end of next year.
Dr Kohl has insisted repeatedly that he will serve a full four-year term if he is re-elected on September 27th, a pledge he reaffirmed yesterday in an interview with the weekly Die Zeit. "I am standing as a candidate for the full legislative period. Full stop," he said.
But Dr Kohl is almost alone within his party in predicting that he would serve a full term. His coalition partners within the Liberal Free Democrats (FDP) say they expect him to identify his mid-term retirement date before polling day.
Mr Schaeuble, the man Dr Kohl anointed last year as his preferred successor, added to the confusion surrounding the chancellor's intentions in an interview with the left-leaning weekly, Die Woche.
"He has said he is standing for another four years but, ultimately, he has left entirely open what can happen within that four years," he said.
The speculation over Dr Kohl's future comes as his loudly-trumpeted comeback appears to have faltered. The latest poll shows his party falling further behind the opposition Social Democrats (SPD), who are now leading by six points.
Dr Kohl's position is so perilous that he has recalled as an adviser one of his bitterest rivals within the party, Mr Lothar Spaeth. A former prime minister of the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemburg, Mr Spaeth attempted to topple Dr Kohl in 1989.
The decision to recall Mr Spaeth, who left politics to go into business, is understood to have been taken at the insistence of Mr Schaeuble, who has begun to distance himself from the chancellor in subtle ways.
According to the Tagesspiegel report, Dr Kohl has agreed to make way for Mr Schaeuble shortly after the end of Germany's six-month presidency of the EU next summer.
Dr Kohl is hoping for a last-minute swing to the CDU during the final two weeks of the campaign, especially if its allies in the Christian Social Union win resoundingly in Bavaria's state election on September 13th. The crisis in Russia offers Dr Kohl a chance to highlight his international reputation.
Strategists within the CDU fear that Dr Kohl, once their greatest electoral asset, has become a liability as voters lap up the message of the SPD leader, Mr Gerhard Schroder, that it is time for a change.
Mr Schroder's personal ratings are much higher than the chancellor's and - as frustrated CDU activists point out - the only politician more popular than the telegenic Social Democrat is Mr Schaeuble.
