Brandt appoints his new Cabinet

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33101, 16 December 1972, Page 15

Brandt appoints his new Cabinet

(N.Z.P„4.-Reuter—Copyright,) BONN, December 15. Mr Willy Brandt, back as the W est German Chancellor for a second four-year term, will see his new Cabinci composed mainly of the old guard—sworn in before the Bundestag (Lower House) today.

Although the Chancellor left all the key posts in the same hands, he has increased the Cabinet by four to 18 Ministries and split up the powerful Economic and Finance Ministry and Science and Education Ministry into four separate offices.

The only real surprise among the 13 Social Democrats (S.P.D.) and five Free Democrat (F.D.P.), the latter party the junior partner in Mr Brandt’s coalition, is the appointment of Mr Egon Bahr, the 50-year-old chief architect of West Germany’s “Ostpolitik” policy of reconciliation with the Communist East.

The former State Secretary at the Chancellery will be Minister for Special Tasks, directly responsible to Mr Brandt.

The cabinet again will have the Free Democrat leader (Professor Walter Scheel) as Foreign Minister; a trade unionist, Mr Georg Leber, a Defence Minister, and Mr Helmut Schmidt in the Finance portfolio. For his first task, Mr Bahr will go to East Berlin on December 21 to sign the historic “good neighbours” treaty with East Germany, crowning his negotiations with the East since late in 1970. ECONOMICS SEPARATE The economic section of Mr Schmidt’s former superMinistry was split off and given to Mr Frans Friderichs, a Free Democrat and a newcomer to Federal politics, and former State Secretary for

Agriculture in the state of ) Rhineland-Palatinate. Mr Brandt took his Parliamentary oath as Chancellor in the seventh Bundestag yes-1 terday after easily winning re-election in spite of a mis-

count that gave him 20 votes | too many. ) The corrected result showed that 493 Deputies in Ithe House had given Mr Brandt 269 Yes votes and 223 I Noes, with one spoiled ballot.