Merkel: German government must give up internal squabbles

24/9/2018 18:11

        erman Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday that it's time for her coalition government to stop getting bogged down in internal squabbles, after its leaders reached a deal to resolve its second major crisis in just three months.
        
        Merkel said she regrets the handling of the latest dispute, over the future of Germany's domestic intelligence chief, and called for Germany's biggest parties to move on from political infighting.
        
        "It is all the more important that we now solve people's problems," she said. "In many areas we have been too preoccupied with ourselves in recent months. That must change."
        
        On Sunday, coalition leaders resolved an increasingly farcical standoff over the head of the BfV spy agency, Hans-Georg Maassen. The center-left Social Democrats had demanded his removal after he appeared to downplay recent far-right violence against migrants in the eastern city of Chemnitz.