The new Dutch government led by Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende was inaugurated in The Hague on Thursday, three months after the elections in which the ruling Christian Democratic Appeal won the most seats in parliament.

The cabinet, Balkenende's fourth in less than five years, consists of 16 ministers and 11 state secretaries, or deputy ministers. These positions are divided among the coalition members according to their size in parliament.

The Christian Democrats supplied eight ministers and four state secretaries, including the party's parliamentarian leader Maxime Verhagen as foreign minister.

Labor provides six ministers and six state secretaries, including home affairs minister Guusje ter Horst. Labor leader Wouter Bos, a former human resources manager with oil giant Shell, took over the Ministry of Finance and is meanwhile a deputy prime minister.

Christian Union, a Christian values party, provides two ministers and one state secretary, including defense minister Eimert van Middelkoop.

The Christian Democrats took 41 of the 150 seats in the lower chamber of parliament in the November elections, followed by Labor with 33 seats and Socialists with 25 seats.

But big differences between the three major parties led to a breakdown of coalition talks late last year, and the Christian Democrats and Labor turned to Christian Union, which has six lawmakers, for a possible coalition.

After five weeks of negotiations, the three parties hammered out a coalition agreement earlier this month which takes a less stringent economic policy and a more flexible stance towards immigration.

The government will spend more on education, child care and health, and allocate tens of millions of euros to transform run-down inner city areas into good places to live in.

On foreign policy, the government wants the country to play "an active and constructive role" in Europe and the world, including participating in initiatives by the United Nations, the European Union (EU) and NATO.

It agrees that the EU needs reform but insists that the proposed EU constitution that Dutch voters rejected in a 2005 referendum should be changed significantly.

The country will continue to take part in international peacekeeping operations, and it will keep its 1,500 troops in Afghanistan as part of the UN-sanctioned International Security Assistance Force.

(Xinhua News Agency February 23, 2007)