Berlin ex-communists regain power

BERLIN, Germany -- Former communists are to share power in Berlin - the once divided city that symbolised the Cold War.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) agreed a coalition with the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) after local elections failed to give them an outright majority.

Predecessors in the socialist party were partly responsible for building the Berlin Wall which divided commusinst East Berlin from West Berlin during the Cold War.

Schroeder's party only turned to the ex-communists after a month of talks to build a three-way coalition with the Greens and liberals failed.

Berlin's Social Democrat Mayor Klaus Wowereit said the two parties had agreed to deep cuts in spending on public-sector employees in an attaemp to curtail the city's $36 billion debt, The Associated Press news agency reported.

PDS leader Gregor Gysi said that if his party could prove itself in Berlin it could lead to "acceptance of the PDS as a sort of normality."

The SPD emerged the strongest party with 31 percent of the vote in the October elections but failed to win enough to form an outright majority as a result of the PDS and liberals making significant gains.

Schroeder had hoped to avoid a coalition with the heirs to the East German communists in the run-up to a general election in September.

The PDS's predecessor is associated with the building the Berlin Wall and the current party has diametrically opposed political views to the SPD on issues such as economic and foreign policy.

The PDS, for example, refuses to support Schroeder's "unrestricted solidarity" with the United States in the war on terror.

Schroeder's party governs one eastern state with the PDS, but he has ruled out a national coalition on the grounds that its foreign policy and economic positions remain too leftwing.

For most of the time since German reunification in 1990, Berlin was governed by the conservative Christian Democrats with the Social Democrats as junior partner in a "grand coalition" of the two biggest parties.

It came to an end in June when the conservative mayor was ousted over a scandal at a city-controlled bank.