Politics: Germany: Christian Democrat Merkel country's first woman Chancellor; Socialist Schröder out

In a historic deal ending a stalemate lasting 20 days marked by intense negotiations, Germany's two leading parties worked out a shared-power agreement that put Angela Merkel in the Chancellorship, while a majority of the cabinet ministries were assigned to the Social Democrats.

USAToday / AP reports the distribution of responsibilities:

Under the terms of the agreement, the Social Democrats would head the foreign, finance, labor, justice, health, transport, environment and development ministries.

Merkel's Christian Democrats and their Bavaria-only allies, the Christian Social Union, would get the defense, interior, agriculture, families and education portfolios. The CSU leader, Edmund Stoiber, would become economy minister. Other than that, officials did not say who would occupy which ministerial post.

It was not immediately clear if Schroeder would have any role in the new government.

But other reports claim emphatically that former SDP Chancellor Gerhard Schröder would not be included in the cabinet at all.

While the Socialists gained the Foreign Affairs ministry, Merkel has been emp[hatic that Germany under this new coalition government would repair its relation with the USA, and support the reorientation of the world's democracies in the struggle against terrorism. On one point, Merkel was known to want Turkey excluded from EU membership, favouring some kind of special relation for that state instead (Germany has numerous Turk immigrants and a second-generation of Turk-descent Germans). Why Merkel's fastidiousness on Turkey in EU? She is among those who still want a mention of the EU's Christian heritage in the EU Constitution, if one is ever to be adopted. Turkey presents a problem to that recognition of Europe's religio-cultural heritage, since it is officially secularist in the face of its own huge popular forces that want an Islamic Turkish state. The present Turkish governtment makes a careful distnction between an Islamic party that leads a secular neutral state, and an Islamic state. Between such an Islamic party, and an Islamicisit theocratic party.

In addition to the EU problematic, others in Germany (perhaps including Merkel) feel Turkey would and should be the mainstay of any future emergence of a pro-democracy federation in the Middle East, one that would include Iraq, a re-oriented Lebananon, Jordan, Israel and Palestine, if the Road to Peace emerges from the fog of terror there. Turkish full-membership in EU could perhaps become an obstacle later to Turk leadership of MidEast pro-democracy federation.

In any case, Merkel has more than relations with the USA and Turkey to concern her and her SDP Foreign Minister (who replaces Jakob Fischer, former BaaderMeinhof terror-group implicateee, more lately of the Green Party in Germany's former ruling coalition under Schröder). Altogether and in stark contrast to the Schröeder years, Merkel offers a hi symbolic function for Germany, being both the first Chancellor from Germany's former Communist-dominated East where she figured importantly in the anti-Communist Christian opposition, and also the first woman to hold the country's hi-est office.

Her position and accompaniment in the cabinet by Edmund Stroiber as Economy Minister will at once give a strong leadership to the unpopular necessary reforms of the languishing German economy, a process in which the cooperatlon of the SDP is vitally important. Merkel's occupancy of her new possition will also encourage all the Christian Democratic Parties of Europe and their representatives in the European Parliament. Mr. Stroiber heads the CDU's affiliated Bavarian party, Christian Social Union. - Politicarp

CNN's report