Germany's Merkel picks Bavarian as govt spokesman
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-11-21 10:55

Germany's incoming chancellor Angela Merkel has picked a close ally of Bavarian premier Edmund Stoiber to be her government spokesman, a Christian Democrat (CDU) official said on Sunday.

Ulrich Wilhelm, 44, is a senior official in Bavaria's ministry for technology and was Stoiber's state government spokesman between 1998 and 2003.

A spokesman for Merkel's CDU confirmed a report in Bild am Sonntag newspaper that she had picked Wilhelm.

A trained lawyer who also served in Germany's air force, Wilhelm worked as a journalist for public broadcasting network Bayerischer Rundfunk before joining Stoiber's government.

Stoiber is the chairman of the Christian Social Union, the arch-conservative Bavarian sister party to Merkel's CDU.

Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported that Merkel got to know Wilhelm during Stoiber's 2002 campaign in the general election, which he narrowly lost to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Merkel said just one week ago in the face of intense media speculation about her choices that she had not yet decided whom she would pick as her spokesman.