BONN -- Chancellor Helmut Kohl narrowly won his fourth term, but needed all his political skill Monday to start reforming his weakened coalition and fend off predictions of an unstable government.


"Willy Brandt once said, 'A majority is a majority,'" Kohl said, happily quoting a Social Democratic predecessor, after his three-party coalition emerged from Sunday's parliamentary voting with a 10-seat majority and 48.4 percent of the national ballots.


That was a big comedown from the cushion of 134 seats and 54.8 percent of the vote won by Kohl's grouping four years ago in the euphoria of unification.


Kohl, 64, has been one of Europe's most important statesmen since taking office 12 years ago at the helm of a nation of 80 million in the heart of Europe. Although foreign policy had not been a campaign issue, he made it a theme of his post-vote news conference.


"All of us need Europe, but we Germans need Europe more than the others," Kohl said. "We're not sitting on an island like some others. It's important that we remain the European motor."


Kohl rejected comments from observers and his main rival, Social Democratic leader Rudolf Scharping, that the conservative-right coalition might not last. He said he had spoken on the telephone with his partners -- Finance Minister Theo Waigel of the Christian Social Union and Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel of the Free Democrats -- about forming a new government.


"We'll wait and see what the coalition negotiations will lead to," Scharping commented. "We doubt that they will produce the stability we would wish for Germany."


His campaign manager, G--nter Verheugen, said he had been contacted by a leader of the Free Democrats, whom he would not name, and said, "The signals are such that I don't predict any great stability for this coalition."


Kohl said that he wanted negotiations among the three government coalition parties on a new power-sharing deal to proceed quickly.


Governing with a narrow majority "will be hard, but so is life. I've never been a fair-weather chancellor," Kohl said.


The Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party, on Monday had already started jockeying for more power in the 19-minister cabinet, where they have four ministries. The Free Democrats have five portfolios, including the Foreign Ministry. The rest were in the hands of the Christian Democrats.


What will not be known for a while is whether the Free Democrats will lose some power because, after their poor showing in the elections, they so clearly are the weak partner, or gain because they could be wooed away by the Social Democrats to form a left-center government.


That gives the coalition 341 seats in the 672-seat lower house of parliament, down from 398 seats in the outgoing 662-seat Bundestag.


Reform communists, celebrating their return to parliament, could also make life difficult for the coalition. They won seats for 30 deputies, including a writer of steamy stories, a forthright lesbian, a Stasi informer and Bismarck's great-grandson.


"We will be anything but a boringly unified fraction," said their parliamentary leader, Gregor Gysi.