The centre-left candidate and frontrunner to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor of Germany said on Sunday that he is ready to lead the country in a coalition with the Greens.
Olaf Scholz, the Social Democrats' (SPD) candidate for the highest job in the September 26 national election, said there was never "any doubt" about the party he hoped to work with.
"I would like to govern together with the Greens. I have never left any doubt about that. I've already worked with the Greens in various governments, in the federal government as well as in Hamburg," Scholz told the Tagesspiegel newspaper.
"We are different parties, we have different objectives, but we have a lot of overlaps," said Scholz, who currently serves as finance minister in Merkel's government.
A cascade of polls show Scholz pulling ahead of Merkel's pick to be the next chancellor, Armin Laschet, the centre-right's candidate that had been favoured for months.
Laschet said during a election campaign rally in the city of Essingen that a coalition between SPD and the Greens would be "a security risk" and that the parties "must not take responsibility in foreign policy alone."
He also accused Scholz of blocking the purchase of armed drones for the Bundeswehr, saying it is urgently necessary to better equip it against hostile attacks.
According to Laschet, Scholz refuses to support the drone project. "The leftists in his party are preventing that," he said.
German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) also accused Scholz of trying to divert attention from the failure with the drone project.
If Scholz's lead can be sustained through election day, it would be a remarkable turnaround for the SPD, which for years has suffered one election setback after another, both at the state and national level.
No matter the outcome, no party is likely to emerge with an absolute majority. That has put pressure on the candidates to answer who they are willing to work with. The period of government formation - the first without Merkel in 16 years - has the potential to be a complicated and quarrelsome affair, political observers say.
