Berlin - Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats yesterday opened talks with former communists to form a new government in Berlin, a historic overture made 12 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The talks could bring the successors to former East Germany's hard-line communists into the German capital's government for the first time since the collapse of the East German regime after the 1989 fall of the Wall.
"I am sure that we will reach an understanding," Berlin mayor, Mr Klaus Wowereit, said about the talks that began more than six weeks after early elections were held in the city-state.