Germany's Green Party agreed on Wednesday to hold talks with Chancellor Schroeder's challenger Angela Merkel on forming a coalition government, but remain sceptical.

"We want to hold exploratory talks, but these are not coalition negotiations," the Green Party's co-chairman, Claudia Roth, told reporters after a meeting with the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

The Green Party, which got 8.1 percent of votes in Sunday's general election, is now a junior coalition party of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's SPD.

Neither Merkel's alliance nor Schroeder's party won a majority needed to form a new German government.

Merkel's Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU), which won 35.2 percent of votes in the election, is seeking to cooperate with the Green Party and invited the party leaders to join coalition talks on Friday.

The CDU/CSU's junior partner, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), got 9.8 percent of votes. The alliance needs a third party to form a coalition government.

Roth said that the Greens had "deep scepticism" over cooperation with the conservative CDU/CSU.

"We Greens have made clear that policies come before power," she said.

Reinhard Buetikofer, co-leader of the Green Party, said his party is ready to go into opposition. "We won't compromise on the content of our policies."

Joschka Fischer, the current foreign minister, announced on Tuesday that he will not lead the Greens in parliament in order to make room for younger people to lead.

A possible coalition government made up of the CDU/CSU with black color, the Greens Party and the FDP with yellow color is dubbed the "Jamaica coalition" because Jamaica has a black-yellow- green flag.

The SPD has said it wanted to cooperate with the FDP to form a traffic-light coalition (red-green-yellow), but the FDP refused to sit together with the Greens.

Source: Xinhua