BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's coalition government may name a successor to Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg as defence minister on Wednesday, coalition sources told Reuters.
Guttenberg resigned on Tuesday after a plagiarism scandal over his PhD thesis, which escalated in the past two weeks.
Guttenberg's Christian Social Union (CSU) -- the Bavarian sister party to Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) -- will insist on keeping either the defence portfolio or taking over another key ministry.
That makes Bavarian state premier Horst Seehofer, president of the CSU, the powerbroker in negotiations with Berlin.
Senior politicians said on Tuesday CSU candidates in the frame included: Hans-Peter Friedrich, the leader of the party in the lower house of parliament; Alexander Dobrindt, the party's secretary general; Christian Schmidt, Guttenberg's deputy at the defence ministry; and Peter Ramsauer, transport minister since October 2009.
A possible candidate from the CDU is Frank-Juergen Weise, who heads the Federal Labour Office, they said.
(Reporting by Andreas Rinke; Writing by John Stonestreet))
