Germany's SPD backs coalition talks with Merkel

Top members of Germany's Social Democratic Party agreed today to launch talks with chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on forming a "grand coalition", clearing the last hurdle to form a new government.
The negotiations between the CDU, its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the centre-left SPD on a coalition agreement can be launched on next Wednesday as decided by the leaders of the three parties at the third round of their exploratory talks last week, SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel said.
Around 85 per cent of 229 delegates from the party's federal and state units, who attended the congress in Berlin, voted for the negotiations with the two conservative parties, Gabriel told journalists after the meeting.

Only 31 delegates voted against while two abstained.
"There was a broad and strong majority in support of the negotiations," he said.
The negotiations will be kicked off a day after the newly-elected Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, holds its constituting session.

Even though the CDU and the CSU together polled 41.5 per cent of the votes in the parliamentary election on September 22 and gained 311 seats in the new Bundestag, they narrowly missed an absolute majority.
A "grand coalition" with the SPD became inevitable for Merkel to seal a third four-year term after her junior partner in the out-going centre-right government, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), failed to gain parliamentary representation by missing the minimum five per cent votes needed.

The Green party, which won 63 seats in the 631-member Bundestag, could have provided an alternative for Ms Merkel to form a new government, but the two sides abandoned their search for a coalition early last week after two rounds of preliminary discussions citing sharp differences on key policy issues.
Neither the conservatives nor the Social Democrats are prepared to enter into a coalition with the Left party, even though the successor to the communist party in former East Germany has won 64 seats in the Bundestag.