In an interview with the weekly magazine Stern, Federal Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said that presuming suspects were innocent until they had been proven guilty was inappropriate in the fight against terror.

"Would it be right to say: I would rather let 10 attacks take place than try to hinder someone who perhaps doesn't want to carry out an attack?" the conservative Christian Democratic politician asked. "My view is that that would be wrong."

Rolf Stegner, the interior minister of Germany's northernmost state, Schleswig-Holstein, slammed Schäuble's comments.

"This suggestion is entirely out of the question," the Social Democrat said, calling on Schäuble not to lose track of Germany's constitution when it came to security policy.

Schäuble was "operating far beyond the constitution if he wanted to suspend the assumption of suspects' innocence," Green party co-chair Claudia Roth said.

Disagreement over scope

Earlier in the day, Germany's federal cabinet agreed on a bill requiring all data concerning telephone and Internet connections to be saved for at least six months. The legislation, which must now be put to the Bundestag for approval, stemmed from a European Union directive that all bloc members were obliged to render into national law.

Schäuble, however, caused discord within the governing coalition by calling for the police to be given access to digitalized fingerprints and photographs which will be used to issue electronic passports to German citizens.

"All the experts say that it's not a matter of whether the next attack will take place, but rather a matter of when," he told Stern.

He has also said that security officials should be allowed to carry out secret online searches of private computers.

Not part of plans

Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries, a Social Democrat, rejected Schäuble's suggestion to save millions of sets of fingerprints.

"There's no legal basis for that at the moment and no draft either," she said in an interview with German public broadcaster ARD.

Next week, Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, is set to discuss amendments to the passport law which have been in the works for some time, Zypries pointed out, adding that there had been general agreement about what they should include.

Government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm suggested on Wednesday not every comment of the last few days should be "commented on so excitedly." He added that Chancellor Angela Merkel believes that a clear course was recognizable in justice and interior ministry policies.