BERLIN, Sept 24: German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats (SPD) floated an unprecedented plan on Saturday to rotate the top job in a bid to break a political stalemate after last Sunday’s inconclusive election.

The head of an influential SPD group said the party’s parliamentary deputies favoured a power-sharing plan with the Christian Democrats (CDU) that would let Mr Schroeder hold office for two years before handing over to the CDU at mid-term.

Several CDU state leaders dismissed the proposal.

SPD deputy Johannes Kahrs said the job-share plan appeared to be the most promising way out of the logjam after the conservatives edged the SPD, but fell short of winning a centre-right majority in a general election last Sunday.

“Schroeder must remain chancellor for the first two years,” Mr Kahrs told Die Welt daily. RTL television earlier reported Mr Schroeder, 61, favours such a rotation modelled on a 1984-88 Israeli government led by Shimon Peres and then Yitzhak Shamir.

“The solution that both sides rule for two years each has the consensus support of SPD parliament deputies,” he said, although there was uncertainty about whether such an uneasy rotation would conform to the constitution.

A “grand coalition” between Angela Merkel’s CDU, their Christian Social Union sister party and the SPD has emerged as a leading option for the next government after the junior partners of both sides rejected offers for complex three-way coalitions.

Mr Schroeder’s SPD won 34.3 percent of the vote, while Ms Merkel’s CDU/CSU won 35.2 per cent in the country’s most inconclusive post-war election. The chancellor has insisted he won a mandate to continue after coming from far behind in opinion polls.—Reuters