BERLIN (AFP)---Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative party on Tuesday rejected charges by Germany’s Jewish community that it was flirting with the extreme-right with hardline proposals against crime by young immigrants.

The secretary general of Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), Ronald Pofalla, said the accusations by a Jewish leader that the party was whipping up xenophobia "could not be topped in their absurdity."

Stephen Kramer, a board member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said this week that a CDU candidate’s tough law-and-order stance in the campaign for a key state election this month "can hardly be distinguished from (the views of) the NPD," a neo-Nazi party.

Kramer warned against stoking prejudice against foreigners.

"There are already signs that the NPD in particular and other right-wing extremist groups are exploiting this debate," he said.

Pofalla told RBB Inforadio that the CDU’s proposals, which include US-style boot camps and short jail terms as opposed to suspended sentences for young offenders, would "apply to all youths in Germany whether they are Germans, the children of immigrants or foreigners."

The CDU has seized on the issue of youth crime ahead of three crucial state elections in the next two months after a series of heavily publicised attacks on older Germans on public transportation.

The secretary general of Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), Ronald Pofalla, said that the accusations by a Jewish leader that the party was whipping up xenophobia "could not be topped in their absurdity."

Polls point to an uphill battle for the conservatives in what will be the first major test of Merkel’s tenuous left-right coalition government with the Social Democrats, formed in November 2005.

Merkel came out last week firmly in favour of Hesse state premier Roland Koch’s proposed measures to fight youth crime and cited the high number of immigrants involved in violent attacks.

Former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of the Social Democrats on Tuesday accused the conservatives of race-baiting and bias.

"Young German right-wing radicals commit an average of three violent crimes per day -- most of them against people of another skin colour," he told the mass-market newspaper Bild.

"You do not hear anything about that from Mr Koch or Ms Merkel."

The Social Democrats argue that better enforcement of existing laws would be enough to combat the problem.