Bavaria leader rejects Angela Merkel's 'we can do this' refugee mantra

MUNICH: Bavaria's state premier took aim at Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policy on Saturday, rejecting her "we can do this" mantra just two days after she defended the message following Islamist attacks in Germany.

The comments from Horst Seehofer, whose Christian Social Union is the Bavarian sister party of Merkel's conservatives, exacerbate the chancellor's difficulty in standing by a policy that her critics have blamed for the attacks and which risks undermining her popularity ahead of federal elections next year.