Word: merkel
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...Anger is mounting in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel's government is reeling from allegations that officials withheld information on civilian casualties from the public. The scandal has claimed the scalps of former Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung and the German army's chief of staff, Wolfgang Schneiderhan. Paying compensation to victims' families is one way to draw a line under the affair as quickly as possible. An out-of-court settlement would avoid a long legal battle with relatives of the victims, and the amount of the payout will depend on the number of civilian casualties. A Defense Ministry...
...cost of the tragic blunder to Merkel's government could take longer to assess. A parliamentary commission is set to investigate the air strike next week, and Germany's current Defense Minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, one of the country's most popular politicians, has already been forced into an embarrassing repudiation of his statement last month that the air strike had been "militarily appropriate." (Read "Much Work Ahead for German Chancellor Merkel...
...placed on the back burner. The Prime Minister and his ministers have racked up dozens of visits to the Middle East and gulf this year, shoring up trade deals and political ties. They have visited Brussels many fewer times. In part, this is Europe's fault. Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Nicholas Sarkozy have made little secret of their distaste for Turkey's eventual membership. "The U.S. must ... convince Erdogan that explicitly resurrecting the E.U. goal is vital, and that recent E.U. coldness towards Turkey is not forever," says Pope. That sentiment would mean more if it came...
...German Chancellor Angela Merkel is thought to be mulling reinforcements to Germany's current deployment of 4,365, but she will wait until after an international conference on Afghanistan, set for late January in London, before announcing more resources. "The timeline is diminishing. European support will last for a year, maybe two," says Greg Austin, vice president of program development and rapid response at the EastWest Institute. "But in the long term, it is not sustainable for the U.S. and its NATO allies to bear the burden. There has to be a more hard-nosed diplomacy to mobilize neighboring countries...
...uproar in parliament and in the media overshadowed a visit to Berlin by the General Secretary of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who was in town to make the case for increased efforts by European allies in Afghanistan. Chancellor Angela Merkel, at a press conference with Rasmussen, criticized the handling of the affair, saying: "If we want trust, we also have to have full transparency." Rasmussen pleaded that it was of the "utmost importance that an American announcement of an increased troop number in Afghanistan is followed by additional troop contributions from other allies." But that's likely to fall...