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KASSEL, Germany, Nov 21 (AFP) -- Leaders of Germany's Greens used a week-end conference to try to re-invigorate a party stuck in the doldrums after a mixed year in office and a string of electoral set-backs.
In a year as junior partner to the Social Democrats of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder -- the party's first experience of national government after years of opposition -- the Greens have seen their popularity plummet.
The three-day congress which ended in Kassel Sunday heard that up to 48 percent of their voters had deserted them in a series of regional state elections over the last few months.
But the party's three leading figures in government -- Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, Health Minister Andrea Fischer and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer -- worked hard to convince delegates the party remains on the right track.
The ministers defended the power-sharing experience so far, taking much of the credit for measures taken by the "red-green" government.
These measures include the chance of double nationality for up to a million foreign-born residents, mainly Turks, hitherto virtually barred from obtaining German citizenship, and an "eco-tax" to penalise energy consumption and finance alternative sources.
Fischer on Sunday told delegates there was no reason for party members to behave like "dogs that have been beaten."
But in Kassel there was no disguising the loss of grass-roots support for the Greens.
There were supposed to be 400 delegates attending. When the gathering opened Friday evening there were only 250, and at the peak there were only 300. At previous Green party congresses there have been 700 delegates.
This appeared to explain the lack of lively debate, and the easy ride the ministers got from the delegates who were present: the dissidents were simply not there.
The Kassel congress was a very far cry from the uproar at the last comparable Greens gathering, in Bielefeld in March, when furious opposition to German support for NATO's Kosovo war against Serbia earned Foreign Minister Fischer a pot of red paint thrown at his head.
Fischer, regarded as representing the "realo" or pragmatic wing of the party, defended Germany's role in the Kosovo war Sunday, and received nothing but applause this time.
He claimed credit on behalf of the "Red-Green" government for having restored the role of the United Nations in the resolution of conflicts such as Kosovo, compared with the "immobilism" under the previous government of Helmut Kohl.
Trittin, seen as a "fundi (fundamentalist)" on the more purist or radical left wing of the party, was also applauded, although he has so far failed to deliver on the party's promise of ensuring the abolition of nuclear energy.
The Green party was founded in 1980, harnessing the popular currents of anti-Cold War pacifism, growing environmental awareness and a rejection of growth-at-all-costs consumerism.