A woman wearing a burqa takes part in a demonstration against the German Bundeswehr army's deployment in Afghanistan, in Berlin on February 20, 2010. | David Gannon/AFP via Getty Images Angela Merkel’s fellow conservatives push for burqa ban CDU general secretary Peter Tauber said the veil is ‘the opposite of integration.’

BERLIN – German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives want to ban Muslim women from wearing the full-face veil in public as part of a tightening of security in response to July’s terror attacks.

“The full-face veil ... does not comply with Germany, and we reject it,” Peter Tauber, the general secretary of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) said during a press conference Monday afternoon, following two meetings of the chancellor with top officials at the party’s headquarters in Berlin. He added that such a ban — which he hopes would cover both the burqa and the niqab, which shows slightly more of a woman's face — would likely have to be agreed upon by the 16 German state governments because of the country's federal structure.

“We are the one party that makes sure that Germany is a safe country, and that it remains a safe country,” Tauber said.

Tauber's comments go significantly further than those of CDU Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, who introduced a catalog of new security measures Thursday but rejected a ban on wearing the burqa in public as “problematic.”

“You can’t prohibit everything you don’t like," De Maizière said.

In September, Merkel faces regional elections in two German states and is under pressure to counter competition from the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party by underlining the CDU's traditional commitment to law and order.

Recent opinion polls show that fears of terrorist attacks are rising in Germany and support for Merkel’s open-door refugee policy has plummeted. In late July, the chancellor interrupted her vacation to lay out a nine-point plan for how to strengthen domestic security.

Later this week, Merkel will spend two days campaigning in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where regional elections will take place on September 4. The AfD is polling 19 percent in recent polls in the state, only five points behind Merkel’s CDU.