BERLIN (AP) – With Germany’s top party leaders fighting over who should be chancellor, one lawmaker had a novel solution: Let the job rotate between left and right – but let Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder go first. A top conservative swiftly rejected that as “crazy.”

Instead, another conservative suggested, Schroeder should back off his claim to lead the government so that the country’s two biggest parties can then embark on coalition talks.

Saturday’s disputes were just the latest in Germany’s postelection standoff, now nearly a week old.

Neither Schroeder’s Social Democrats nor Andrea Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats and their sister party, the Christian Social Union, won a majority from voting last Sunday. After days of unsuccessful jostling by each in hopes of building a coalition with smaller parties, the likely solution now is a “grand coalition” of the two main parties.

Both leaders insist they should be chancellor, deepening the impasse.

Schroeder’s party argues that the conservatives, who form a single parliamentary group, should be viewed as separate parties – breaking with decades of practice. That would make the Social Democrats the stronger side, therefore giving it first shot at the chancellor’s job.

On Friday, the junior partner in Schroeder’s outgoing government, the Greens, rejected talks with Merkel on an improbable three-way coalition with her party and the pro-business Free Democrats.

For their part, the Free Democrats have ruled out talks on keeping Schroeder in office by joining the Social Democrats and Greens.

Schroeder and Merkel held brief initial talks Thursday and agreed to meet again next week.

Hesse state governor Roland Koch, a leading Christian Democrat, accused Schroeder’s party of questioning “democratic traditions” in demanding the chancellery and said Schroeder should back down.

“There is a leap from sounding each other out to coalition talks,” Koch told the weekly Focus. “In doing that, it must be clear that the (Christian Democratic) Union has the right to propose the chancellor and will nominate Angela Merkel.”

“Schroeder was in office; he no longer has a majority,” Koch was quoted as saying. “He must go.”

Koch rejected a suggestion that Merkel sacrifice her own claim to the chancellery to smooth the way to a coalition deal.

Asked whether a right-left government without Schroeder was thinkable, a top Social Democratic, Kurt Beck, told Focus that “in a democracy, one should never say never.”

But Beck, governor of Rhineland-Palatinate state, insisted that issues should be negotiated before people – a position at odds with that of the conservatives.

Koch and another Christian Democratic governor, Lower Saxony’s Christian Wulff, have featured in media speculation as possible alternatives to Merkel, who would be Germany’s first woman leader. However, Wulff also underlined his support for her.

“There will be no chancellor … by the name of Christian Wulff,” he was quoted as telling the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. “I am not available.”

Also Saturday, a Social Democratic lawmaker advocated a “grand coalition” in which the chancellor’s job would rotate.

“Schroeder must be chancellor for the first two years” of the government’s four-year term, lawmaker Johannes Kahrs was quoted as telling the daily Die Welt. He added that the split-term idea met with “consensus in the parliamentary group” of Schroeder’s party.

Wulff called it “a crazy idea.”

AP-ES-09-24-05 1123EDT