Merkel quells party rebellion ahead of coalition deal vote

BERLIN, Feb 26 (AFP): German Chancellor Angela Merkel will put a hard-fought coalition deal to a vote Monday by her conservative party, which is expected to give its approval after she moved to quash a rightwing rebellion.
Officials from Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party she has led for nearly 18 years and steadily moved towards the political centre, are gathering from 0900 GMT in Berlin.
The main aim of the meeting is to give the green light to a government pact hammered out in early February with the Social Democrats (SPD) after four months of political limbo in Europe's economic powerhouse since a tricky general election.
Merkel paid a high price to break the impasse and coax the reluctant SPD back into a loveless "grand coalition", which has ruled Germany for eight of her 12 years in power.
The deal included the CDU ceding control to the Social Democrats of the powerful finance ministry, seen by conservatives as a guarantor of budgetary rigour in Germany and the eurozone.
Merkel, once the seemingly invincible leader of her party and the nation, has looked severely weakened in recent months given her protracted struggle to put together a viable coalition for her fourth and possibly final term.
Opponents of her liberal refugee policy have grown more outspoken as the country's major parties face pressure from the far-right AfD party which has railed against a mass influx of more than one million asylum seekers since 2015.