Political split threatens planned D. Bahn listing

BERLIN, April 13 (Reuters) - Germany's plans to partly privatise rail operator Deutsche Bahn were thrown into doubt at the weekend as Chancellor Angela Merkel said she did not agree with her coalition partner's proposals for the listing.

For months, Merkel's conservatives and her Social Democrat (SPD) partners in Berlin have been at loggerheads over plans to list Germany's last big state-owned company, which had a turnover of more than 31 billion euros ($49 billion) last year.

The company's board had hoped to achieve a partial listing this year, to which end SPD leader Kurt Beck recently suggested separating local rail transport from the privatisation model.

In an interview with Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Merkel rejected this idea.

"I think it's right to split the infrastructure from transportation," she said. "But I don't think it's right to make distinctions between local and long distance transport."

Analysts have said the coalition will probably have to agree by April 28 to achieve the listing this year, and Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee said there was still work to do.

In an interview due to appear in Monday's edition of business daily Handelsblatt, Tiefensee said the listing should not be allowed to fail, according to a preview on Sunday.

"In view of the problems caused by strong growth in goods freight in Germany as a transit country, I can only warn against allowing the privatisation to be put off," he said. (Writing by Dave Graham, editing by Will Waterman)