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By Noah Barkin and Claudia Kade BERLIN, Oct 10 (Reuters) - Conservative leader Angela Merkel will become Germany's first woman chancellor under a deal with Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) to break a post-election deadlock, sources said on Monday. Three weeks after voters gave Merkel's conservatives an unexpectedly narrow win over Schroeder's SPD in a federal election, senior sources from both parties said an agreement had been struck that should pave the way for a power-sharing cabinet. According to a senior SPD source, the SPD is poised to get the foreign, finance, justice and labour ministries in a new coalition...

A system in crisis, a country adriftSep 22nd 2005 From The Economist print edition Post-election paralysis has dashed the hope that Germany could build quickly on its economic recovery and embrace reform A system in crisis, a country adrift Sep 22nd 2005 From The Economist print edition Post-election paralysis has dashed the hope that Germany could build quickly on its economic recovery and embrace reform YOU’VE heard of the perfect storm; now meet the perfect stalemate. After its parliamentary election on Sunday September 18th, Germany seems stuck in the worst logjam of its post-war history. None of the coalitions that...

Schröder could stay as chancellor until poll in new yearThe chances of Angela Merkel becoming Germany's next chancellor suffered a setback yesterday when the Greens appeared to rule out joining a coalition with her conservative CDU party.With the country in political gridlock after Sunday's inconclusive general election, speculation was growing last night that the chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, would try to force new elections early next year. A day of political horse-trading left Europe's most populous country facing months of confusion. No government is likely to emerge until November at the earliest. Both the main party leaders announced that they had...

Gerhard Schröder was publicly jubilant despite his party's defeat at the polls in the German election last night. Roger Boyes, correspondent for The Times in Berlin, explains the wily political operator's plot to turn defeat into victory. "By claiming victory today, Gerhard Schröder is bluffing - he's basically trying to disorientate Frau Merkel. His ambition is to reach a position where there is a grand coalition with himself as Chancellor despite his party's second place, and he is playing a typically complex tactical game to get there. "When a party obtains a majority in an election in Germany, as the...

ON SEPTEMBER 18, THE Germans will go to the polls. The extraordinary elections are being held a year before the end of the Bundestag's regular four-year legislative term, thanks to an elaborate and, to many Germans, distasteful charade. That price would be well worth paying if it produced a government with the will and mandate for much-needed political and economic reforms. Germany "confronts monumental tasks," President Horst Köhler observed in a televised address on the need for fresh elections. "Millions of people are unemployed, many for years. Federal and state budgets are in an unprecedented, critical condition. The existing federal...

Germany's opposition Christian Democrats on Friday accused chancellor Gerhard Schröder of using lies and dirty tricks to discredit Angela Merkel, as a fresh opinion poll indicated that the chances of a decisive election victory for the CDU leader appeared to be slipping away. Volker Kauder, CDU general secretary, attacked the chancellor for allowing his Social Democrats to spread “bare-faced and brazen lies” about the CDU's tax proposals. The unusually harsh criticism of the chancellor suggested the CDU is scrambling to regain the political upper hand, following the publication of the third poll in three days predicting the CDU will fail...

Barely noticed, Germany has overtaken America to become the world's biggest single exporter, shipping the hardware that powers the rising economies of Asia and eastern Europe. Its trade surplus is now greater than that of China, Japan and India combined, reaching a staggering 16.8 billion euros in June alone. The profits made by German companies are running at over 33 per cent of national income, the highest in 40 years. Eyeing a bargain, the world's canniest are already piling into German assets for the great Teutonic rebound. George Soros and fellow hedge funders are snapping up distressed banks. Britain's Terra...

Shortly after Gerhard Schröder first became German chancellor in 1998, the British tabloid press declared his longtime rival and then finance minister Oskar Lafontaine "the most dangerous man in Europe." At the time, this seemed a ludicrous judgment - not least because it was quickly proved wrong by Lafontaine himself, who resigned only weeks afterward in what is generally regarded one of the more embarrassing cop-outs in postwar German politics. Now, almost seven years later, Lafontaine, who was the first former leader to be threatened with expulsion from the Social Democractic Party (SPD) for delivering a series of public diatribes...

German President Horst Koehler has agreed to dissolve parliament and allow early elections, probably in September. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder purposely lost a confidence vote on 1 July to pave the way for the early elections, but needed the president's backing. Mr Schroeder's move followed a humiliating loss for his Social Democrats in regional elections in May. The opposition Christian Democrats, led by Angela Merkel, are currently well ahead in opinion polls. Despite the apparent prospect of defeat, Mr Schroeder opted for the early elections to seek a fresh mandate for a controversial reform package. In this serious situation, our country...

Taking reporters' questions with Bush after a White House meeting, Schröder endorsed the president's message about Iran. "We're going to continue being tough and firm," he said. "The message must stay very clear." But the two leaders did not make it entirely clear whether last week's election of a deeply conservative Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had opened any gap between European and American expectations of the talks aimed at halting any Iranian nuclear weapons work. Ahmadinejad has vowed to restart the country's uranium-enrichment program, suspended since November, for what he contends would be peaceful ends but which the White House...

WASHINGTON, June 27 - After a meeting with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, President Bush said Monday that it was "unacceptable" for Iran to continue pursuing a nuclear program and strongly embraced European efforts to negotiate a deal to halt it. President Bush said on Monday that he and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany had agreed on a firm line on Iran. After an election in Iran that the administration dismissed as a sham, Mr. Bush said Monday that the United States and Europe were sending the country a "focused, concerted, unified message." Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, vowed after...

…and Merkel as Thatcher, mein Gott! Here are a few thoughts to ponder regarding Germany's descent into political kaos: At what poiunt did Chancellor Gerhard Schröder deem that moving up elections by a year to this September would increase his chances of winning? After all, the process of moving up national elections is not that easy. First Schröder needs to call for a vote of confidence within the Bundestag. He needs to lose this vote, thereby resulting in the dissolution of his Social Democratic/Green coalition government — and thus the need for a new election. If the opposition Christian Democrats...

TO THE rest of the world they seem the perfect couple. After years of bickering between their two countries, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Russian President Vladimir Putin have stood shoulder to shoulder on a host of issues, including opposing the US-led invasion of Iraq. But behind the outwardly chummy relations between the two countries, it has been business as usual for Russian agents, who have continued to spy on their former Cold War foes. The spying has reached such epidemic proportions that German intelligence officers say the best way to find out what German MPs are talking about on...

Defying Parliament, chancellor asserts authority to determine foreign policy BERLIN Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, faced with a surge of opposition in Parliament to his plan to lift the arms embargo on China, asserted in an interview published Thursday that he had the authority to lift the embargo whatever Parliament might say on the matter. .

Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, on Monday said he would support the nomination of Paul Wolfowitz as new head of the World Bank, in effect ruling out any concerted European opposition to his appointment. European officials have complained in private about President George W. Bush's nomination last week of the US deputy defence secretary and about the lack of proper consultation on the matter. Academics, development experts and campaign groups have protested about Mr Wolfowitz's nomination and lack of opposition from Europe. Mr Wolfowitz is expected to be confirmed at a World Bank board meeting on March 31. By convention,...

Welcome in Germany! Europe is the destination of the first trip to the foreign of President Bush in his 2nd term. That is a strong signal for us Europeans, it is a confession to the friendly cooperation across the the Atlantic. The visit in Mainz is furthermore a clear message to Germany: America sees a special weight in the relations between us. We Germans know to value this message. The United States have played a major role in preserving our freedom and re-uniting our country. For that, the USA deserves our grattitude. 16 years ago, the father of the current...

A SENIOR adviser to Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, has been accused of passing confidential documents to East Germany in the 1980s which revealed how the British Army and RAF would react to an attack by Soviet-led Warsaw Pact forces.The details were among more than 100 pages of material allegedly given to the East Germans by Karsten Voigt, 63, a former MP who now works for the German foreign ministry as co-ordinator of German-American relations. He spent yesterday at an international security conference attended by Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary. The German magazine Focus claimed this weekend that in...

FRANKFURT, Aug. 17 - Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany has been a healer of old wounds this summer, traveling to France to take part in the ceremonies commemorating the 60th anniversary of D-Day; to Poland, where he honored those killed in the Warsaw uprising; and to Romania, where he laid roses at the grave of his father, a young soldier lost in World War II. Now, Mr. Schröder has built an even more personal bridge to a former wartime foe: he and his wife, Doris Schröder-Köpf, recently adopted a 3-year-old girl from Russia. The adoption, reported Tuesday by two German...

(excerpt of article copied from hard copy edition of FT) - SNIP - These testimonies to irrelevance recalled themselves on the eve of this week’s Nato summit in Istanbul. As we gazed sout-east over the Bosphorus in the direction of Iraq, one of those charged with drafting the leader’s communiqué remarked that the outcome had been another bad-temepered compromise. Nato ambassadors had sweated long and hard to gloss over their differences. But, though thickly applied, the gloss was patchy. The ambiguities of the text, this official said, had left room for the obligatory public spat between France and the US....

Germany's initial election results are in following a day of voting in the European parliamentary elections. The CDU will remain as Germany's strongest party in the European parliament. Currently, the party stands at just over 45.5 percent. The Social Democrats are currently at around 22 percent. The Greens currently have 11 percent, which is their best-ever result. They've called themselves the winners of the European elections. Meanwhile, the Party of Democratic Socialism, the PDS and the Free Democrats, the FDP, are expected to clear the 5 percent electoral hurdle. All in all, citizens from 19 European Union countries, including France,...