German coalition delays discussion of railway sale
BERLIN, Dec 8 (Reuters) - Germany's ruling coalition has cancelled a meeting of party leaders scheduled for next week at which they were to discuss plans to partly privatise national railway company Deutsche Bahn, a party spokesman said.
The meeting of top officials from Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), its Bavarian sister party and the centre-left Social Democrats was originally planned for Monday but has been cancelled, a CDU spokesman said on Saturday.
He gave no reasons for the cancellation and did not say when the coalition leaders would reschedule the meeting.
The SPD wants to delay any decision on the partial privatisation of Deutsche Bahn until March 2008 after state elections in Hesse, Lower Saxony and Hamburg, German weekly Focus reported on Saturday.
Merkel wants the sale to take place by 2009. However, her conservatives and the SPD have been unable to agree on how the sale of Deutsche Bahn, Germany's largest employer, should be handled.
The CDU backs Deutsche Bahn management, which wants to place the 25 percent stake with institutional investors, but the SPD are insisting that the shares go to small investors.
Many politicians say the privatisation, which aims to raise 3 billion euros ($4.37 billion), is unlikely to go ahead. (Reporting by Sabine Siebold, writing by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Anthony Barker)
