Merkel Seeks Broad Consensus on New President

Angela Merkel, Federal Chancellor of Germany, attends the opening plenary session on the first day of the 42nd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, 25 January 2012. EPA/BGNES

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has declared that she will seek agreement with the opposition on a new German president after Christian Wulff's resignation on Friday.

The oppositional Social Democrats and Greens will be approached immediately after the parties within the ruling centrist-right coalition consult among themselves, Merkel revealed.

"We want to conduct talks with the aim, in this situation, of being able to propose a joint candidate for the election of the next German president," she declared, as cited by international media.

Wolf resigned on after a series of scandals that rattled the country over the past three months.

On Thursday, Germany's Prosecutor's Office declared that it may want to strip Wulff of his immunity in order to investigate him on corruption accusations. The prosecutors suspect that Wulff improperly accepted benefits from a friend of his, a German film producer.

In December, it emerged that Wulff had received a large private loan from a wealthy friend's wife in his previous job as governor of Lower Saxony state.

In January, the German publicity was stirred by a furious call he made to the editor of the country's biggest-selling newspaper before it reported on the loan.

Horst Seehofer, the President of Germany's upper house of Parliament, will become interim president of the country.

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