Berlin – Signaling a change in style, Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged Wednesday to put aside past differences between Germany and the United States even as she pressed for the Bush administration to take seriously European concerns about alleged CIA prisons in Europe.
“Let the battles of the past lie – those battles have been fought,” Merkel said in her first speech to Parliament as chancellor. “As far as the future is concerned, the new government will work with all its strength for a close, honest, open and trusting relationship in the transatlantic partnership.”
The new leader also promised to stand firm in her first crisis abroad – the kidnapping of a German woman in Iraq. She said Berlin would not be blackmailed by captors’ demands that Germany stop all contacts with the Iraqi government.
But she did not say whether her government would fulfill U.S. hopes of more assistance to Iraq. Germany is helping train Iraqi police and military officers outside the country, and Merkel has said it still will not send troops into Iraq.
In European policy, she indicated a shift in emphasis by reaching out to smaller nations that were irritated by predecessor Gerhard Schroeder’s cozy alliance with France.
Merkel, a conservative, took office last week in a coalition with Schroeder’s Social Democrats. She used the speech Wednesday to set her own tone and agenda for the next four years, but her remarks also reflected the delicate balance of that alliance.
She inherits relations with Washington that were strained by Schroeder’s vehement stance against the Iraq war.
France and Russia joined Germany in defying the Bush administration over the war – a position that divided Europe, with some smaller countries such as Poland aligning themselves with the U.S.
Merkel had been expected to reverse her predecessor’s antagonism toward the U.S.
