Berlin  - German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) won a regional election Sunday in the German state of Hesse, enabling the party to form a coalition after 12 months of political stalemate.

The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), who govern at the national level with the CDU, saw their share of the vote plunge to an historic low after narrowly failing to unseat CDU Prime Minister Roland Koch a year ago in a closely contested state election.

Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt - German Chancellor Angela Merkel, attending the Sharm el-Sheikh summit on the Gaza crisis, called Sunday for an end to weapons smuggling into the Gaza Strip.

Berlin - German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a joint statement Saturday to the governments of Israel and Egypt supporting efforts for a lasting ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

According to the statement, the three EU countries "declared our readiness to take a series of measures that would contribute to the end of weapons smuggling into Gaza."

Berlin - German Chancellor Angela Merkel paid her first visit Thursday to the archives of former East Germany's secret police, the Stasi.

Merkel spoke favourably about the work being carried out at the archives, which documents surveillance carried out by the former East German socialist state on its citizens.

"It has been shown that the opening of the Stasi files has contributed to reconciliation, and not division" the chancellor said during her first visit to the former Stasi-headquarters, situated in east Berlin's Lichtenberg area.

Berlin  - German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives are looking for victory Sunday when voters in the state of Hesse go to the polls for the second time in 12 months to elect a new parliament.

Opinion polls give her Christian Democrats (CDU) a comfortable lead over the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), junior partner in an uneasy coalition with the chancellor's party in Berlin.

Berlin - The three parties supporting German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed late Monday in Berlin on a fresh round of stimulus for the weakening German economy, sources at the meeting said.

Senior officials said the governing parties had committed to a huge wave of spending likely to inject 50 billion euros (66 billion dollars) into the economy as well as a massive government fund to boost struggling industries with loans and guarantees.

The "credit and guarantee fund" will reportedly be worth 100 billion euros (135 billion dollars).

Officials said its name would be a way of stressing that it was not a vehicle for taking industries into government ownership.