He also faces a tough challenger for re-election, the conservative premier of Bavaria, Edmund Stoiber.

The defeat of the government of Maurice Duplessis in Quebec dashed Manion's hopes of building an electoral alliance with the conservative premier.

However, the conservative premier of Alberta, Ralph Klein, has threatened a legal fight to exclude his province from the new rules.

Constantine Karamanlis, the former conservative premier, was recalled from exile in Paris to restore democracy.

He was referring to Edmund Stoiber, the conservative premier of Bavaria, whose Christian Democratic coalition is leading Mr. Schröder's Social Democratic coalition in many polls by five to seven percentage points.

His stance on the futility of war outraged many people, especially as they were coming from a national war hero and the son of a respected and conservative former premier.

The ambitions of Edmund Stoiber, the conservative premier of Bavaria, to lead Germany have never been much of a secret.

It is symptomatic of the volatile new mood on the German right that Franz Josef Strauss, the conservative premier of Bavaria, declared this month after talks in Moscow with Mikhail S. Gorbachev that West Germany had to conduct its own talks with the Soviet Union because President Reagan was no longer predictable.

Last week, Mr. Stoiber, the conservative premier of Bavaria, said "politics should intervene" to revive confidence in Deutsche Telekom.

Franz Josef Strauss, the conservative premier of Bavaria and a political ally of Mr. Kohl, is among the most ardent supporters of a liberalized arms export policy.