Berlin tackles 'farmbelt fuhrer' website

Germany's interior minister, Otto Schily, is locked in a long-distance struggle with one of the world's most notorious neo-Nazis over the right to a web address.

The offending word is Bundesinnenministerium (or federal interior ministry). Surfers who type in the address www.bundesinnenministerium.com expecting to reach the interior ministry's homepage find instead a site decorated with swastikas and a picture of a man sporting a Hitler moustache and wearing Nazi uniform.

It is the latest, and most audacious, example of something against which the ministry has been warning about for several years - the rapidly growing use of the internet by right-wing extremists.

The address was registered by the man in the picture, the neo-Nazi activist Gary - or Gerhard - Lauck, and channels visitors to his Nebraska-based group's website, which offers, among other things, an article packed with racist abuse, a computer game entitled "Nazi Doom" and a swastika captioned with: "Next time... no more Mr Nice Guy."

Mr Lauck, who affects a German accent despite being an American, is known as the "Farmbelt Fuhrer". He was convicted by a German court in 1996 for inciting racial hatred and deported to the US in 1999.

An interior ministry spokesman in Berlin said yesterday: "We have been in contact with his internet service provider and we have also taken the matter up with the [UN's] World Intellectual Property Organisation".

The UN body has an arbitration centre which deals with disputes over web addresses.

Last year, Mr Lauck was involved in a similar row after creating a site with the name of the German domestic intelligence service.

The mayor of Berlin mayor, Klaus Wowereit, and other leading Social Democrats have struck a deal with the former east German communists allowing a coalition to run the capital for the next four years.