April 19 (Bloomberg) -- Germany must do all it can to save General Motors Corp.’s Opel unit to help the industrial base survive the recession, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said as he presented his party’s program for Sept. 27 elections.

“Germany must stay the No. 1 production center and economic motor for Europe, that’s the basis of our wealth,” Steinmeier said in the text of a speech in Berlin today to about 3,000 party members. “For that reason, we must do everything in our power to save a company like Opel, because whatever goes belly-up won’t bounce back after the crisis.”

Steinmeier, whose Social Democratic Party approved its campaign program yesterday, taunted his coalition partners from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and the opposition Free Democrats, Merkel’s preferred ally, for their opposition to the state taking a stake in Opel.

“It’s a joke” that the two parties “welcome a Middle East wealth fund taking a stake in Daimler, but rule out from the start the government taking a temporary stake in Opel,” Steinmeier said.

Dieter Zetsche, Daimler AG chief executive officer, told the annual shareholder meeting this month that the company’s funding is “secure” partly because it recently received a 2 billion-euro ($2.6 billion) investment from Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund in return for 9.1 percent of its stock.

To contact the reporters on this story: Brian Parkin in Berlin at bparkin@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 19, 2009 10:43 EDT