The German parliament is due to elect Angela Merkel, the leader of the Christian Democrats, as the country's new chancellor on Tuesday.

Merkel, who will head a coalition government with the former governing party, the Social Democrats, will be the first woman chancellor in the history of Germany and the first to have grown up in the former GDR or the German Democratic Republic.

The coalition, the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Union (CDU/CSU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), holds 448 of the 614 seats in the Bundestag.

The Bundestag will vote at about 10:00 a.m. (0900 GMT) to confirm Merkel's chancellorship, which has been set during negotiations of the two major parties in the past two months. Merkel needs only 308 votes to be elected.

In Sept. 18 elections, neither Merkel's alliance nor outgoing chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's party win a clear majority to be elected. The two major parties then decided to form a grand coalition.

Source: Xinhua