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| - Tensions simmered among Angela Merkel's conservatives on Friday as the state premier of Bavaria openly criticised the man who beat him in a bruising battle to lead the alliance into elections. Armin Laschet, the head of Merkel's CDU, won a bitter fight this week against Markus Soeder, head of the smaller Bavarian CSU, to lead the conservatives into September's election. The vicious competition between Laschet, who is backed by the CDU's leadership, and Soeder, who is more popular among the public, has left the conservatives bitterly divided. In an interview on Friday, Soeder said he was not impressed by the reasoning behind Laschet's candidacy, suggesting that it was not progressive enough. "I was not convinced by the rationale behind the candidacy. I stand for modernisation in the programme," Soeder told the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung. "I think for example, that modern economic policy must reconcile both the environmental and economic imperatives," he said, rejecting claims that he was positioning himself too close to the increasingly popular Greens. Asked if he was the "more modern candidate" of the two, Soeder said that would be a "presumptuous exaggeration". But he later added that his "approach is perhaps a little more progressive", be it in the areas of environmental policy, gender equality or the high-tech agenda. The vicious infighting within Merkel's CDU-CSU alliance has left voters looking elsewhere. Polls earlier in the week even had the Greens overtaking the conservatives to top the surveys. The latest INSA survey shows the conservatives back up on top but only with a one percentage point lead above the Greens at 23 percent. bur-hmn/fec/har
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