BERLIN: Leaders of Germany`s far-right AfD party were at loggerheads on Thursday over whether its radical `Fluegel` (The Wing) faction should be split off to create a separate party.

Two parties could probably reach more voters than the `current ... conflict-prone constellation`, party co-leader Joerg Meuthen told the Tichys Einblick news magazine in an interview published on Wednesday.

`Everyone knows that Fluegel and its key exponents are costing us a massive amount of votes in the conservative camp,` he said.

But AfD grandee Alexander Gauland said on Thursday that two parties would diminish, rather than strengthen, one another. `Joerg Meuthen`s thoughts are not very constructive and highly apolitical,` he said, according to German news agency DPA.

Fluegel, which has about 7,000 members, was co-founded by notorious AfD lawmaker Bjoern Hoecke, who has sparked outrage with attacks on Germany`s culture of remembrance for Nazi crimes. Hoecke also criticised Meuthen`s comments in a Facebook post, describing them as `foolish and irresponsible` `The discussion about the division of our party into a western and an eastern AfD, into a Fluegel and a non-Fluegel AfD is superfluous,` Hoecke wrote.

The AfD in March said it was planning to dissolve the radical Fluegel group after it was placed under formal surveillance by Germany`s domestic intelligence agency.

Intelligence officials said Fluegel violated `characteristic features of the free democratic basic order, human dignity, democracy and the rule of law`.-AFP