Kohl Appoints Cabinet, After Coalition Feud
Chancellor Helmut Kohl formed his new all-German government Wednesday after a lengthy coalition squabble overshadowed by the Persian Gulf crisis and the Soviet crackdown in Lithuania.
The Christian Democrat Union leader named his Cabinet, a coalition with the right-wing Christian Social Union and liberal Free Democrats, after six weeks of negotiations following united Germany’s first free elections on Dec. 2.
Most of Kohl’s old Cabinet remained, including veteran Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, wheelchair-bound since an assassination attempt in November.
Kohl, who will be formally reelected chancellor today, was in a somber mood when he spoke to journalists briefly after meeting the CDU lawmakers.
He said that every conceivable chance to prevent war in the gulf should be seized.
Bonn is worried by the Soviet crackdown in Lithuania, fearing it could lead to the unraveling of the close personal relationship that Kohl painstakingly built up with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in 1990.
Eastern Germany is thinly represented in the new Cabinet, lending support to critics who said that the rich West effectively annexed the former Communist East during the Oct. 3, 1989, unification.
The “five new states,” as former East Germany is now known, will be represented by only three Cabinet members--Women and Youth Minister Angela Merkel, Transportation Minister Guenther Krause and Education Minister Rainer Ortleb.
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