Merkel confirms chancellorship, SPD accepts coalition negotiations

German conservative leader Angela Merkel Monday confirmed her victory as next chancellor in a grand coalition government with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as a junior partner. The SPD has accepted their fate but reportedly won major cabinet posts.

"The Christian Democratic alliance (CDU/CSU) will occupy the chancellery," Merkel announced at her first press conference as German Chancellor-designate.

She said her party had voted unanimously to open formal negotiations for a government with the SPD, expected to start next week and last through Nov. 12.

Merkel, to be the first woman chancellor in German history, made the announcement after meeting her top aides and holding another face-to-face meeting with incumbent Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and SPD Chairman Franz Muentefering.

She labelled the deal, reached after Schroeder agreed to step aside, "good and fair" and said the parties agreed that "there is no alternative to a reform course" for Germany.

She said a grand coalition with Social Democrats would have to work on policies that help create new jobs in a "coalition of new possibilities."

"We have achieved something big, we have the basis for coalition talks," she said.

The two sides have edged closer on key issues such as the labor market reform, social welfare system and public finances.

On the same day, emerging from the summit of the two parties, Muentefering told his press conference that the SPD accepted coalition negotiations with two votes against it and seven abstentions.

He said that his party had accepted the decision for Merkel as chancellor "with respect", but admitted that in the new cabinet the SPD would have less might than in the last government.

But observers here said the SPD has squeezed great compromise from the CDU alliance.

Under the agreement, each party will control eight ministries, but the SPD has reportedly grasped almost all the major ministerial posts such as the foreign, finance, labor, justice, health, transport, environment and foreign aid.

The CDU/CSU will get the defense ministry, the interior and a new ministry for economics and high technology, according to the German news agency DPA.

Wolfgang Schaeuble, former chairman of the CDU, will be interior minister while the CSU's chairman Edmund Stoiber will head the new ministry for economics and high technology.

Muentefering said that outgoing Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will participate in formal coalition talks.

But he did not say anything concerning Schroeder's future role in the government. But some CDU officials revealed that Schroeder would play no role in the new government.

Muentefering said that SPD members will probably vote on the coalition agreement with the CDU/CSU during a party convention in the southwestern town of Karlsruhe scheduled for Nov. 14-16.

However, under Germany's election law, the chancellor should be elected by the Bundestag or the low house of the parliament.

As a result, the agreement between the SPD and CDU/CSU is "not a done deal" as several SPD members have vowed to vote against Merkel in the Bundestag.

The outcome is to end weeks-long political crisis resulted from the Sept. 18 elections, in which neither the SPD-Green coalition nor the CDU/ CSU-FDP alliance won a majority.

The CDU/CSU seized 226 seats in the Bundestag, four more than that of the SPD.

After attempts to join hands with smaller parties failed, the SPD and CDU/CSU have sought to forge a grand coalition government, which was once seen between 1966 and 1969.

Source: Xinhua