Bonn Opposition Nominates Leader

BONN —  Leaders of Germany’s main opposition party Monday named moderate Rudolf Scharping as the sole candidate to take the helm of the Social Democrats after he won an unprecedented vote by the rank and file.

Scharping, the 45-year-old premier of Rhineland-Palatinate state, told television that the party chairman had a right to run as the challenger to Chancellor Helmut Kohl in elections next year.

“I won’t let anyone take that right away from me,” he said.

After his nomination, Scharping brushed off questions on whether he would face Kohl. Traditionally, the Social Democrats’ chairman has not been the challenger.

Scharping said the party will have to make the formal decision, starting at a special congress June 25, on how to pick its challenger for the chancellorship.

Transitional Chairman Johannes Rau said the party executive in Bonn backed Scharping with only one abstention.

The leadership’s endorsement after Scharping’s victory in a first-ever U.S.-style primary Sunday made it virtually certain that he will be formally elected June 25.

Scharping was almost unknown nationally until he routed Kohl’s Christian Democrats in the chancellor’s home region in 1991 to become premier of the agricultural, industrial and wine-making state.

Scharping has repeatedly suggested that he would like to be the party’s candidate to run against Kohl in national balloting that will cap a grueling series of 18 regional and European elections in 1994.