Koehler quit for offer he 'couldn't refuse'

Former IMF chief Horst Koehler said on Saturday he had been planning to stay at its helm until he got an offer he couldn't refuse - to be his party's candidate for German president.
Trying to explain why he gave up one of the world's top economic jobs as head of the International Monetary Fund in Washington to run for a largely ceremonial post, Koehler said in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel news magazine it was an honour he felt he couldn't turn down.
"I had been rather busy at the IMF," Koehler, 61, said, when asked why he knew so little about a messy political battle that had split Germany's conservative opposition in their bungled attempt to find a candidate to succeed President Johannes Rau.
"On top of that, I was involved with the extension of my contract at the IMF beyond May 2005. That's what my future plans looked like.
"But then I was asked if I'd be available for the president election. It's an honour and challenge that couldn't be turned down," he said in his first major interview since announcing his resignation from the IMF on Thursday.
Conservative party leader Angela Merkel, embarrassed after her first choice Wolfgang Schaeuble was vetoed by their small liberal Free Democrat allies, turned to Koehler early last week and reached him just as he returned from an IMF trip abroad.
Koehler, a former state secretary in the Finance Ministry under ex-Chancellor Helmut Kohl, said he knew Merkel from the time she was a minister in the same government.
He later worked with her as head of the German association of savings banks. "I knew her, she knew me. Apparently that led her to think that I could be one of the candidates for president," he said.
Koehler accepted her offer after Schaeuble was defeated for the office that holds little power.
Koehler, who is little known in Germany and will reportedly be taking a big pay cut, did not sound concerned about being the second choice of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU).
Because the CDU and FDP hold a slim majority in a special assembly that elects the president in May, Koehler is favoured to beat Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's candidate Gesine Schwan.
Schroeder, whose Social Democrats trail the CDU in opinion polls, slammed the opposition for their clumsy bid to find a candidate.