Freedom vs. Security

The Emnid survey commissioned by the Sunday edition of the Bild newspaper found that 48 percent of Germans were willing to give up personal freedom rights, such as by allowing the security forces to conduct secret online searches of personal computers, while 47 percent were against trading rights for security.

The so-called "government Trojan" has been a topic of hot debate in Germany, with Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble pushing for the legal right to monitor computers, but many politicians on the left remain opposed to the plan.

Bavarian Interior Minister Günther Beckstein, a member of the Christian Social Union who has called for the searches of suspects' computers to be legalized, said opposition to the searches among politicians was putting political maneuvering ahead of public safety.

"Party politics have won out," he told the weekly Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

Labor Minister Franz Müntefering of the Social Democrats, who share power in Chancellor Angela Merkel's broad coalition government, however, called for politicians to move slowly and deliberately when considering changes to personal freedom laws.

"The recent success in preventing terror shows how well positioned we are with current laws and the potential they offer," he told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "I recommend deliberateness and a very careful check in regard to new ideas."

Terrorism not a personal threat

The Emnid survey found that 25 percent of the population felt personally threatened by Islamist terrorism, against 73 percent who did not.

Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries called Sunday for Germany to register the names of people buying chemicals that could be used in building bombs. The three arrested terror suspects had collected a large amount of hydrogen peroxide, which when concentrated enough and mixed with other chemicals can become explosive.

"The fact that the chemicals in the case of the three arrested suspects could be freely bought without registering the purchaser is, I think, not particularly fortunate," she told Deutschlandfunk radio on Sunday.

Police need Muslims' assistance

German commentators have noted with concern that two of those arrested on Tuesday in connection with a massive bomb conspiracy aimed at US citizens in Germany were German converts to Islam.

Sunday's Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung referred to a "changed quality of terrorism" in its editorial.

The paper noted that it was "necessary to distinguish Islam and Islamism," yet it warned this remained difficult.

In interviews Sunday, Zypries and Schäuble both said they expected Muslims to notify police if they were aware of violent radicals in their religious communities.

Germans split on Afghanistan mission

Though Germany refused to become involved in the US-led war in Iraq, there has been widespread concern that the deployment of some 3,000 German troops to Afghanistan was turning the country into a target for Islamist terrorists.

Almost half of Germans -- 49 percent -- backed withdrawing German troops and police, while 43 percent wanted the stabilization mission to continue. The German parliament is to debate renewing the deployment this autumn.