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Merkel faces tough G8 summit
04/06/2007 08:04 - (SA)
Berlin - German Chancellor Angela Merkel will host seven of the world's most powerful men this week at a Group of Eight summit where her natural modesty and iron nerves will be tested to the limit.
The woman who made history as the first female, the youngest person and the first from the former communist east to lead Germany, has won a reputation in her 19 months in power as a no-nonsense leader with enough youthful charm to win the trust and even affection of her opposite numbers.
But her upbringing as a pastor's daughter in communist East Germany instilled her with fortitude that she can show in a flash of steel when necessary.
The summit at the Heiligendamm resort on Germany's Baltic Sea coast will bring together the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.
Mediation
Her biggest challenge will be mediating between US President George W Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin amid tensions reminiscent of the Cold War.
Their ongoing conflict has forced on a re-alignment of German foreign policy in which Merkel, 52, has won praise for negotiating the proximity to Washington and Moscow with a balance of principles and pragmatism.
Bush is known to have a soft spot for the chancellor. He notoriously gave her an impulsive backrub at the last G8 summit in Saint Petersburg and relished a down-home barbecue of wild boar with her in her electoral district last July.
Putin, however, enjoyed a much cosier relationship with Merkel's predecessor Gerhard Schroeder.
A meeting at the Russian president's summer residence on the Black Sea in January turned tense when Koni, Putin's formidable black Labrador, was invited to approach Merkel, who has a well-known fear of dogs.
German commentators saw the move as an attempt by Putin to intimidate the diminutive chancellor and relations between the two have remained cool.
Summit showdown on greenhouse gas emissions
Her six-month stint at the helm of the European Union ending this month has already produced a pact on slashing greenhouse gas emissions, a feat she hopes to replicate in Heiligendamm.
Although Bush has now said he is prepared to negotiate a global cap on carbon pollution, Merkel has warned she will not accept any "lazy compromises" and insisted that any future agreement be made within a framework overseen by the United Nations.
Berlin's daily Tagesspiegel predicted a summit showdown.
"The German government seems to have believed that with Bush's personal reverence for Merkel and the mounting public expectations it had two trump cards it could play at the decisive moment," it wrote on Saturday.
"That was a miscalculation. It is apparent that the circle around the chancellor spent too much time in recent months talking about and not with America."
- AFP
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