German far-right picks new leader amid protests

Germany's far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) re-elected its leader at a weekend convention held under police protection from hundreds of protestors who call the party racist.

Udo Voigt, party leader since 1996, beat challenger Udo Pastoers by winning 136 of 218 votes cast on Saturday in a municipal building in an outer Berlin borough.

"We plan to have a compact team assembled for the 2009 election...We are a German-friendly party, and consider the German people to be in danger," spokesman Klaus Beier said yesterday after leaving the convention.

About 450 police blocked off a road leading up to the building and prevented the crowd from approaching the entrance, detaining five of around 650 demonstrators on Saturday. The NPD, which is represented in Germany at state and local government, but not federal level, is in financial difficulty after the German parliament fined it for false accounting. It has until next month to pay a balance of €2.2 million although it is appealing the fine.

Mr Voigt has said that Adolf Hitler's former deputy, Rudolf Hess, was worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, and state prosecutors charged him last month with inciting racial hatred for comments about a dark-skinned German soccer player.

The party counts some 7,000 members in Germany. Last year it took seats on every local council it contested in the eastern state of Saxony and won 25.3 per cent in a neo-Nazi stronghold near the Czech border.