The former German finance minister, Mr Oskar Lafontaine, is preparing to return to the political fray only six weeks after his abrupt withdrawal from public life. The weekly news magazine Focus quoted Mr Lafontaine yesterday as promising to address current political issues in a major speech on May 1st.
"These include unemployment and the war. Nobody can feel indifferent about these issues", he told friends, according to the magazine.
Mr Lafontaine has made just one public statement since his resignation last month and has had no contact with the Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder. But the former finance minister, who also resigned as chairman of the Social Democrats and gave up his Bundestag seat, is understood to be unhappy about the escalation of NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.
Friends say Mr Lafontaine claims some responsibility for what he perceives as an inadequate debate about the Kosovo conflict within both his own party and the Greens.
"I blame myself today for the fact that I did not discuss early enough within the party the threat of war in Kosovo and the alternatives to it. That was a mistake. I was operating out of misplaced loyalty," Focus quotes him as saying.
Mr Schroder cannot rely on such loyalty from his former minister for much longer because Mr Lafontaine's speech to trade unionists in his home city of Saarbrucken is the first of a succession of planned appearances.
Senior Social Democrats yesterday warned Mr Lafontaine against attacking the government in his Saarbrucken speech and some suggested that he would be better advised to say nothing at all.
Mr Lafontaine has made it clear that he intends to speak about the Kosovo conflict and Germany's problem of mass unemployment in next week's speech.
Some senior party figures believe the Chancellor should offer Mr Lafontaine a prestigious post, preferably abroad, as the best strategy for silencing the former minister. But one leading Social Democrat predicted that Mr Lafontaine would turn down any such offer, preferring to snipe at his former rival from the sidelines. "No matter how we rattle and shake, we can't get rid of him," he said.
