BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - The Green Party has warned against a harsh confrontation ahead of the planned eviction of the village of Lützerath in the Rhineland. "I think de-escalation of all parties involved is now the order of the day," co-chair Ricarda Lang said Monday on the sidelines of a closed-door meeting of the party's federal executive committee in Berlin. Although energy company RWE has a legal claim here, negotiations have succeeded in ensuring that the Rhenish coalfield will see the end of coal in 2030 and that several villages where people still live will not be dredged, Lang said. "Nevertheless, I have understanding for people who are now demonstrating there, for frustration and, above all, for pressure for more climate protection," she added.

The focus now must be on efforts to phase Germany out of coal nationwide by 2030, she said. She pointed out that within the black-green state government of North Rhine-Westphalia, Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) bore responsibility for the police operation.

The energy company RWE wants to demolish the Rhineland village of Lützerath in the west of North Rhine-Westphalia in order to mine the coal underneath. The land and houses of the village, whose residents no longer live there, now belong to RWE. However, climate protection activists now live in the remaining premises and have announced resistance. They see no need for the removal and burning of the coal. A large police deployment is therefore expected.

Among the topics of the two-day retreat of the Greens are also the upcoming state elections this year in Berlin, Bremen, Hesse and Bavaria. The Green Party's top candidate in the February election for the Berlin House of Representatives, Bettina Jarasch, said her goal was to "get the city running again." To do this, she said, she wants to forge an alliance with business and the unions, rebuild the city so that it is easy to get around everywhere without a car, and implement the plans for administrative reform that were drawn up years ago. There is also a lot to be done at the schools. Recently, he said, only the shortage of teachers and buildings had been discussed, and the issue of the quality of education had fallen by the wayside.

Co-chairman Omid Nouripour also lashed out at the Berlin SPD and its top candidate, Franziska Giffey, the governing mayor of Berlin. He said that it was wrong to act as if there had only been riots and attacks on emergency forces in Berlin on New Year's Eve. In view of the general situation in Neukölln, however, one had to ask what had "gone wrong" in the district in which Giffey had held responsibility for many years as a district councilor and mayor.

Lang and Nouripour assessed the balance sheet of the Greens after one year of government participation in the traffic light with SPD and FDP consistently positive. "We Greens can handle crisis and we have led this country through troubled waters, through a situation that many of us could not have imagined a year ago," Lang said. The country is not divided, he said, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin's attempts to exploit high energy prices to do so. The German government has countered with aid packages, he said.

Asked whether the Greens also wanted to do things better or differently in the future, Nouripour replied: "The central task is not to tear apart on the open stage what we have managed to achieve together. That is a task for everyone in this coalition."/hrz/DP/jha