Germany to form right/left coalition
Conservative leader Angela Merkel says she will become Germany's first woman chancellor under a deal with Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats.
The deal, which ends Schroeder's seven years in office, breaks a three-week deadlock that started when voters gave Merkel's conservatives a narrow victory but not the majority needed to form a center-right government.
"The conservatives will occupy the chancellery. The conservatives and SPD will be represented equally in the Cabinet with ministers. That means it is not possible that the one outvotes the other."
Merkel said her party, the Christian Democrats, and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, would have six seats in the new Cabinet in addition to the chancellery, with Schroeder's SPD getting eight seats.
Almost an exact 50/50 split of posistions of power. I don't expect this to be real stable, and will probably result in an indecisive government that doesn't get much done. What this means for relations with the US in unclear. The SPD is in a posistion to wring a lot of concessions from the CSU, but domestic policy will top their list of concerns.
Jay