In what is being hailed as a historic moment, German Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed both houses of the U.S. Congress on Tuesday, speaking on such subjects as Iran and Afghanistan, and appealing for U.S. cooperation in fighting climate change.
Mrs Merkel, whose center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) emerged as the single largest party after the elections held in Germany in September and is the senior partner in a coalition government with the Christian Social Union (CSU) and Free Democratic Party (FDP), also met with U.S. President Obama at the White House prior to her address to Congress.
According to the
BBC the President described Mrs Merkel, the first ever female Chancellor of her country, as an "extraordinary leader" and noted that from the viewpoint of the U.S. "Germany has been an extraordinarily strong ally on a whole host of international issues".
Addressing Congress Mrs Merkel, only the second German leader to be invited to address the legislature of the U.S. federal government and the first to do so since 1957, leader of the then Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), Konrad Adenauer, was the speaker on that first and hitherto only occasion, spoke of both her country's desire to see Iran prevented from acquiring a nuclear weapon and greater stability in Afghanistan.
But, as the
BBC reports, in a speech which earned her a standing ovation and much applause, Mrs Merkel made a special plea for the U.S. to signal its commitment to reaching an agreement on fighting global warming at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which is being held in Copenhagen in December.
CNN says that Mrs Merkel, who was speaking during the month which marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 55-year-old Chancellor having spent her childhood in communist East Germany, told Congress:
Icebergs are melting in the Arctic. In Africa, people become refugees because their environment has been destroyed. We need an agreement on one objective: Global warming must not exceed 2 degrees Celsius
She added that a firm commitment from the U.S. and Europe to an agreement in Copenhagen would be key to persuading China and India to sign up to a deal.
On the subject of the recent worldwide financial crisis Mrs Merkel explained:
A globalized economy needs a global order ... a global framework of rules. Without global rules and transparency and supervision, we will not gain more freedom, but rather risk the abuse of freedom and thus risk instability
Steve Rosenberg,
BBC correspondent in Berlin, has observed that Mrs Merkel must exercise caution when offering Germany's support for the fight in Afghanistan as the conflict there is unpopular with the German public.
