Merkel visits US

Angela Merkel's four-day visit to the United States will likely be dominated by policy issues not included in the German chancellor's official agenda.

One thing that Merkel will be seeking from US President Barack Obama is a clear signal that Washington intends to remove its last remaining nuclear warheads from German soil. This is in keeping with the security policy of Merkel's center-right coalition government.

Obama on the other hand will be looking for a signal from Merkel that Germany will fulfill its pledge of helping him close the US detention center at Guantanmo Bay by accepting released inmates.

But Merkel will be arriving in the US empty-handed as none of Germany's 16 states has officially agreed to accept released Guantanamo prisoners.

Reneging on a promise

For several months Germany and the US have been holding negotiations on a resettlement program for detainees who cannot return to their own countries for fear of reprisals. Plans to find them new homes in Germany though, have been a tough sell to the voters.

Ahead of next month's election in Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, Integration Minister Armin Laschet flatly rejected Merkel's attempt to convince the states to accept even a small number of former detainees.

"I can't understand why those allegedly innocent prisoners cannot resettle in the US," Laschet said. He added, that he assumed they were not entirely innocent, which would be "even less a reason for Germany to allow them in."

Nuclear Horse-trading

This lack of concrete good news on Guantanamo won't help Merkel in her efforts to get a commitment from Obama on withdrawing the remaining US nuclear warheads based on German soil.

Berlin wants them removed as part of an effort to make Germany nuclear-weapons free by 2013. But as the government's commissioner for transatlantic relations pointed out, it's not quite as simple as that.

"Those tactical weapons are part of a NATO strategy, and cannot be withdrawn by the United States alone," Hans-Ulrich Klose said in an interview with German TV news channel N-24 on Monday.

He argued the removal should be part of a wider disarmament agreement with Russia because "it is there that most of the tactical nuclear weapons in Europe are still based."

'Terrorists must not obtain nuclear material'

Chancellor Merkel is also to attend the Washington summit, a gathering of world leaders aimed at finding ways to prevent terrorists from obtaining nuclear material for use in so-called "dirty bombs."

"This is one of the biggest threats to our security in the new millennium," Merkel told journalists in Berlin shortly before departing for Washington.

She said she was also confident that an agreement within the United Nations Security Council could be reached soon, which would impose tougher sanctions on Iran.

Western nations suspect that Iran is pursuing a secret nuclear weapons program, which they fear could also become a source of nuclear material that could be used by extremists in a terrorist attack

uh/dpa/Reuters
Editor Chuck Penfold