Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl faces renewed calls for his resignation from the German parliament, the Bundestag - this time from within his own party.

The former chancellor resigned on Tuesday as honorary chairman his party, after refusing to reveal the sources of large political donations he failed to declare while in office.

The party leader - Mr Kohl's one-time protege and anointed successor, Wolfgang Schaeuble - has refused to resign.

The German media has portrayed Mr Kohl's resignation as a victory in the power struggle between the two men.

But Mr Kohl's departure has not resolved the crisis.

Mr Schaeuble remains an unsatisfactory stop-gap leader tarnished by the same scandal that brought down his former boss.

He has admitted receiving over 100,000DM from Karlheinz Schreiber, the arms dealer at the centre of the crisis.

And Mr Schaeuble's chances of leading the CDU into the next general election as the chancellor candidate have been damaged almost beyond repair.

Cutting old ties

His task now is to smooth the transition to a new generation of leaders who remained outside the network of alliances and intrigue forged by the former chancellor in his 25 years as party leader.

But he faces a difficult task. An emergency audit of the party finances could prove embarrassing when it is published later this week.

It has already emerged that the auditors have expanded their inquiry and will now be inspecting party records covering the last 10 years.

And despite Tuesday's show of unity, he could still face a leadership challenge at the party conference in Essen in April.

The party rejected his offer to resign after a five-hour session. But many commentators still doubt he is the right man to lead the party out of its worst crisis in the post war years.

Helmut Kohl's resignation completes the fall from grace of the chancellor once hailed as one of Europe's finest statesman and the mastermind of German reunification.

But the CDU remains mired in scandal and the decision to leave Mr Schaeuble in the leadership indicates the difficulty of finding a replacement untainted by the present crisis.

It was "a choice between Kohl, Schaeuble or Anarchy" the influential Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said.