New German Unity Cabinet Gets to Work : Politics: It ratifies historic treaty granting its sovereignty, then opens debate on how to finance the staggering costs of the nation’s East-West merger.

BONN —  The first government of newly united Germany formally ratified the historic treaty granting the country its sovereignty Friday, then began debating how to meet the staggering costs of the East-West merger.

The lower house of Parliament, the Bundestag, also rushed through a new voting law to cement plans to hold all-German national elections Dec. 2.

Squeezed into narrow seats in the Bundestag building--once the city’s waterworks--the 663 members of Parliament met for their first working session since East and West Germany reunited Wednesday.

Although Berlin is now the official capital of Germany, Bonn remains the seat of government. What, if any, role the sleepy Rhine River city will play in administration of the new nation remains a topic of hot debate.

The Bundestag’s first order of business was ratification of the so-called “two-plus-four” treaty, which ends special rights conferred on the four main World War II allies after Nazi Germany was defeated in the war.

The treaty, signed Sept. 12 in Moscow by the United States, the Soviet Union, France and Britain, still must be formally ratified by those countries, although it already is in de facto effect.

“We want to use our regained sovereignty . . . for a new order of peace in Europe and for a new world order,” Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher said in a speech to the Bundestag.

“We do not associate our union with a claim for more power,” Genscher added, “but we are conscious of the heightened responsibility we now carry.”

The deputies, whose ranks now include 144 members from what was East Germany, approved the treaty with a show of hands.

The legislators then began tackling budgetary problems in the face of a 1990 deficit that so far has tripled with the costs of unification and of bringing the stagnant east up to the standards of the country’s affluent west.

Finance Minister Theo Waigel delivered his first draft budget for a united Germany, showing a deficit of 66.8 billion marks (about $45 billion) and a spending increase of 20 billion marks ($13 billion).

The high price of unification is a key issue in upcoming elections.

The opposition Social Democrats have accused Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his conservative Christian Democrats of concealing the real costs in order to enhance Kohl’s chances for reelection. Kohl is the clear front-runner in the race against Social Democratic challenger Oskar Lafontaine.

The Bundestag decided Friday on a show of hands to divide the country into east and west voting districts, a move that will give small parties in the five new eastern states improved chances of winning seats in the Bundestag.

The new law, which still must be approved Monday by the Bundesrat, or upper house of Parliament, mandates that the parties must poll 5% of the vote only in their respective areas--east or west--to qualify for representation in Parliament.

The law replaces the Bundestag’s first choice--5% of the nationwide vote--which was rejected by the constitutional court on the grounds that it was unfair to the small, fledgling political parties in the east.

Those parties include the reformed Communist Party, now calling itself the Party for Democratic Socialism, and Bundnis (Alliance) 90, whose members include leaders of the grass-roots revolt that toppled East Germany’s corrupt Communist regime one year ago.