- guardian.co.uk, Monday August 7 2000 02.06 BST
In a magazine interview the interior minister, Otto Schily, gave a firm thumbs-down to proposals for a ban on the most radical legal far-right group. Earlier the idea had been given a sympathetic reception by Mr Schily's cabinet colleague, the environment minister Jürgen Trittin.
Almost two weeks after Chancellor Gerhard Schröder launched a campaign against the ultra-right, it is still far from clear what the authorities actually intend to do.
The weekend brought evidence of renewed police zeal in dealing with neo-Nazi skinheads; and Mr Schily told the news magazine Der Spiegel that he was considering deploying border police in areas of racial tension.
But if the government hoped to inspire a general public stand against the extremists, the signs were not promising.
Last week Mr Schröder's spokesman called on Germans to become personally involved in combating neo-Nazi thuggery. On Friday night in the eastern city of Eisenach more than 300 people did gather in support of two Africans who had been spat at, kicked and chased by a gang.
But a march against racial violence in Düsseldorf, a city of almost 600,000 people, at tracted no more than 1,300 the following day. It was called after a home-made shrapnel bomb went off outside a station injuring 10 immigrants, six of them Jewish. One was a pregnant woman who lost her unborn baby. No one has claimed responsibility.
A rally in the same city in favour of tougher measures against certain breeds of dog two weeks earlier brought out 10 times as many people.
On Saturday the police arrested 100 neo-Nazis in the eastern state of Thuringia as they tried to get to a banned rally called by the National Democratic Party (NPD).
So far the main effect of the controversy has been to provide the ultra-right with a rare bout of sustained media coverage. The NPD has seized the moment to propose a march through the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in January to mark the liberation of Auschwitz.
It is the NPD that Bavaria's interior minister, Günther Beckstein, said last week should be outlawed. The idea was taken up by Mr Trittin, a leading Green minister in the governing coalition of Social Democrats and Greens.
But it was rejected at the weekend not only by Mr Schily but also by the interior ministers of Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, two of the regions most prone to neo-Nazi violence.
They predicted a ban would run foul of the constitutional court and, even if approved, would merely drive the movement underground.
