German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer is facing growing pressure to resign on over his militant past with news that prosecutors will probe whether he perjured himself at a guerrilla murder trial.
Fischer yesterday saidhe had no reason to resign as foreign minister and deputy chancellor, a move commentators said would cripple Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's centre-left government a full two years before the next election.
Frankfurt state prosecutors notified parliament yesterday they had grounds to suspect Fischer may have lied to a court last month about meeting with an RAF guerrilla in the 1970s.
A leader of the conservative opposition in parliament, Peter Ramsauer, called on Fischer to go on leave until the probe is finished, while Bavarian state premier Edmund Stoiber said the minister would have to quit if it was proved he lied.
"Fischer should temporarily leave office until it is determined whether Fischer had ties to terrorists, and if so what", Ramsauer was quoted in today's edition of the Bildtabloid.
Stoiber, a potential challenger to Schroeder in the next election in late 2002, said Fischer would have to go if it turned out he had lied in court about an association with a Red Army Faction (RAF) guerrilla in the 1970s.
If it is proven he gave false testimony then he would no longer be acceptable as a member ofthe government, he said.
Fischer's past has been under scrutiny since he appeared in January as a character witness for Hans-Joachim Klein, a former comrade who was sentenced to nine yearsfor his role in Carlos the Jackal's 1975 attack on OPEC ministers in Vienna.
Three people died in the attack in which Carlos, Klein and four others took some 80 hostages, including 11 ministers.
A further controversy over his attendance at an anti-Israel conference in Algeria in 1969 is also hanging over the minister.
Fischer has a lot of explaining to do not only about his past but about what he told a court, said Hesse state premier Roland Koch.He is trying to push his past out of his memory.