Angela Merkel, Germany’s Chancellor, has said that the country’s attempt to create a multicultural society has “utterly failed”, adding fuel to a debate over immigration and Islam which is polarising her conservative coalition.

Speaking to a meeting of young members of her Christian Democrats (CDU), Merkel said allowing people of different cultural backgrounds to live side by side without integrating had not worked in a country that is home to some four million Muslims.

“This [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed,” Merkel told the meeting in Potsdam.

The Chancellor has faced pressure from within her party to take a tougher line on immigrants who do not show a willingness to adapt to German society and her comments appeared intended to pacify her critics.

She said too little had been required of immigrants in the past and repeated her usual line that they should learn German in order to get by in school and have opportunities in the labour market.

‘Alien cultures’

The debate over foreigners in Germany has shifted since Thilo Sarrazin, a former central banker, published a book accusing Muslim immigrants of lowering the intelligence of German society.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/10/20101016202120286735.html