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GV Mass rally in main square in Mainz, West Germany.
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SV Cameramen gathered about Christian Socialist Party speaker Franz Josef Strauss combing hair.
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SV Meeting called to order with bell.
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SV Mrs Marianne Strauss (wife) standing in crowd.
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SV Strauss standing on rostrum waving to crowd as people applaud. (2 SHOTS)
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SV Crowd applauding.
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SV Strauss speaking in German.
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Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: West Germany's opposition leader Franz Josef Strauss has accused the President of West Germany's Central Bank, Mr. Otto Peohl, of meddling in politics. The allegation follows a claim by Mr. Peohl that election posters issued by Mr. Strauss' Bavarian Christian Social Union amounted to scaremongering. The posters which portrayed Mr. Strauss as Adolf Hitler, Dracula or butcher were designed to stop what opposition conservative regard as a campaign of defamation against their candidate.

SYNOPSIS: With the West German elections less than a month away Mr. Strauss was on Friday (12 September) chasing votes in Mainz. This week his party opened on exhibition in Bonn in which drawings depicting m. Strauss were displayed alongside propaganda cartons that the Nazis has used to discredit Jews. Mr. Strauss countered the scaremonger charge with an allegation that Mr. Peohl had engaged in\ an election row over currency reform. Ironically in an attempt to keep the campaign free of insult trading the four parties represented in Parliament earlier this year signed a treaty promising towage a fair and factual campaign.

For the most part the debate has centred on east-west relations.. Mr Strauss has focused on Mr. Schmidt's aborted meeting with former Polish leader, Edward Gierek and East German leader, Erich Honecker in August., He accused him of selling to the Atlantic Alliance and preparing the ground for "European self-neutralisation". Seizin on the government's caution over Poland he accused Mr. Schmidt of propping up "economically and politically bankrupt communist regimes". The Bavarian challenger has accused large parts of the government's Socialist Democratic Party of being anti-American, anti-western and anti-army.