Polish coalition on brink, early polls loom

WARSAW, Sep 21 (Reuters) - Poland's conservative-led ruling coalition moved close to a collapse today because of an escalating war of words over its 2007 budget and the plan to send more troops to Afghanistan.

The senior Law and Justice conservatives of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said they could no longer treat junior leftist Self-Defence as reliable coalition partners, hinting that early polls could be on the cards.

''We cannot treat Self-Defence led by Andrzej Lepper as a serious partner,'' Marek Kuchcinski, leader of the Law and Justice parliamentary group, said in parliament.

He urged Self-Defence deputies to stage a party coup against Lepper, a firebrand populist, and join Law and Justice ranks.

The zloty fell half a per cent against the euro and bond prices also dipped as investors saw the war of words as a sign the four-month-old coalition governing the biggest ex-communist EU member was on the brink of collapse.

Tensions between the two partners have been steadily increasing over the last weeks as Lepper demanded more spending on farming, education and health, threatening the government's commitment to keep the budget deficit under control.

Earlier today, Lepper, who is deputy prime minister and farm minister, renewed his verbal assault on the budget draft and again threatened to quit the coalition.

He also criticised Kaczynski and accused the conservatives of seeking to discredit him.

His deputies in parliament slammed the government's plan, announced last week, to send 1,000 troops to Afghanistan as part of NATO operations there, arguing Poland cannot afford it.

Lepper's criticism of the budget bill came despite the fact that the finance ministry offered to seek additional savings in order to meet some of his demands without breaching the agreed 30 billion zloty budget deficit cap.

The Law and Justice conservatives won parliamentary and presidential elections last year but fell well short of a majority and since May have ruled in an uneasy alliance with Self-Defence and a smaller nationalist right party.

REUTERS PB MIR RAI2157