GERMANY SPD ON THE RUN OVER GREENS' PETROL TAX

BONN (Reuters) - Germany's opposition SPD ran for cover Monday after the
Greens, their likeliest ally in any future government, demanded a threefold
rise in gasoline tax, the end of NATO and the legalization of marijuana.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl seized on the Green proposals for attack in an
attempt to revive his flagging poll ratings and scare voters away from any
``red-green'' coalition.

The Greens agreed at a weekend congress, held to prepare for September's
general election, to triple gasoline taxes, wind down NATO, slash the size
of the German army and legalize marijuana. The gas tax increase would more
than triple the cost of gasoline over 10 years to five marks ($2.72) a liter
or about $10.30 a gallon.

Social Democrat (SPD) politicians sought to distance their center-left party
from the manifesto, which they see as a sure vote-loser given Germany's huge
car industry.

``This demand is absolute nonsense. You won't get gasoline at five marks a
liter with us,'' SPD parliamentary business manager Peter Struck told
Deutschlandradio Berlin.

Kohl and his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) said the Greens
would be a disaster in government.

``It would be a huge setback for Germany economically and socially if a
red-green coalition put in place even some of the things the Greens have
said they want,'' he said.

Kohl attacked the Greens' vote against German troops taking part in
peacekeeping missions in Bosnia as ``putting at risk the great trust Germany
has built in the international community over the past decades.''

Gerhard Schroeder, the SPD's challenger to Kohl, said no SPD-led government
would scrap the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Schroeder told the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper he would ensure
continuity in German foreign policy if elected in September.

Political analysts called the petrol tax a godsend for the CDU. ``It scares
the living daylights out of people,'' Dietrich Thraenhardt, a political
scientist at the University of Muenster, told Reuters.

Schroeder, who trounced the CDU in an election in his home state of Lower
Saxony last week, once sat on the board of Volkswagen and cultivates a
pro-business image.

The Greens want to use revenue from a progressive raising of gas taxes over
10 years to cut high social security contributions, a move they say would
create thousands of jobs.