Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, April 10, 1990                   TAG: 9004100133
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: EAST BERLIN                                LENGTH: Medium

E. GERMANY FORMS GOVERNMENT

Prime Minister-designate Lothar de Maiziere announced that his right-of-center Christian Democrats will lead a five-party coalition that gives the government a two-thirds majority of the legislature, which will enable it to make the numerous constitutional changes necessary to pave the way to German unification.

He said his Christian Democrats, who were the biggest winners last month in East Germany's first free vote after 40 years of Communist rule, will fill 11 ministerial posts in the new government

Seven Cabinet posts, including the foreign and finance ministries, will go to the left-of-center Social Democrats, the largest opposition group, which initially had refused to join the government. The Liberals will get three seats, the right-wing German Social Union two, and Democratic Awakening one, de Maiziere said.

De Maiziere said he hopes to present his Cabinet to Parliament for ratification Thursday.

The foreign minister will be Markus Meckel, one of three Protestant ministers in the 24-member Cabinet. Another pastor, Rainer Eppelmann, the leader of the small Democratic Awakening Party, is to become defense minister. The Lutheran church played a key role in the early days of last fall's mass demonstrations against the regime of Communist leader Erich Honecker.

The church has emerged once again as the only major institution with high public trust in a country in which virtually all political figures were tainted by connections to the Communist Party or the Stasi secret police.