German Chancellor To Seek Fifth Term

Following months of speculation about his intentions and health, Chancellor Helmut Kohl announced Thursday that he would run for an unparalleled fifth four-year term in elections next year. He will apparently seek a mandate to cement Germany into a unified Europe and lead the national government back to Berlin.

Kohl made the announcement in a television interview at a spa in Austria on his 67th birthday. After more than 14 years in office, he is already his country’s longest-serving postwar chancellor and the most durable German leader since Bismarck, who unified Germany in 1871 and served for more than 19 years.

“I have thought about this very carefully here,” Kohl told a German television interviewer at Bad Hofgastein, south of Salzburg, which he visits annually to lose weight. “I will run because I believe I have a duty to do this in the current situation. We face difficult international developments.”