Tag Archives: Germany

Germany’s Merkel to visit Washington March 14

German Chancellor Angela Merkel addresses a joint news conference with Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi following talks at the El-Thadiya presidential palace in Cairo, Egypt March 2, 2017. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel will travel to Washington on March 14 to meet President Donald Trump, their first encounter after a rocky start to relations amid disagreements about trade, Trump’s travel ban and his comments about the media.

A U.S. official announced the visit, which comes shortly before a meeting in Germany of the finance ministers of the G20 industrialized countries and will help lay the groundwork for Trump’s visit to Germany in July for a meeting of G20 leaders.

The new Republican president and Merkel issued a joint statement after a telephone call in January, underscoring the importance of the NATO alliance and vowing to work together more closely to combat terrorism.

A few days later, Merkel sharply criticized Trump’s temporary travel ban on citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries. She has also repeatedly underscored the importance of a free press when asked about Trump’s negative comments about the media.

Merkel had a warm relationship with Trump’s predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama.

The meeting between Trump and Merkel is likely to cover a wide range of issues, including the global economy, trade, the fight against Islamic State, NATO and ties with Russia and China.

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal in Berlin; Writing by Eric Walsh; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Germany says to keep soldiers in Baltics as long as needed

German Foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel speaks during a news conference in Riga, Latvia, March 1, 2017. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins

RUKLA, Lithuania/AMARI, Estonia (Reuters) – German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Thursday criticized Russia’s military build-up on its borders with the Baltic states as irrational and said Germany would keep troops in the region for as long as needed.

Gabriel visited about 400 German soldiers stationed in Rukla, Lithuania, as part of a German-led battle group of 1,000 troops that will be joined this year by a U.S.-led forces in Poland, British-led soldiers in Estonia and Canadian-led troops in Latvia.

NATO is expanding its presence in the region to levels unprecedented since the Cold War, prompted by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and accusations – denied by Moscow – that it is supporting a separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine.

The NATO presence will swell further for a series of exercises this summer, but is dwarfed by the Russian military build-up, U.S. officials say.

“The military potential that the Russian Federation has built up here at the border is completely irrational in my view because there is zero threat emanating from these countries,” Gabriel told reporters.

Gabriel gave no further details, but said the German troops would remain at the Lithuanian base “as long as needed”.

Russia has said it has noticed German soldiers deploying along its borders for the first time since World War Two and said it views the deployment of NATO troops and military hardware to the Baltic states as a threat.

Moscow has described its own military deployments as being either defensive and a direct response to NATO, or as part of a sweeping program to modernize its armed forces.

“SOLID PROTECTION”

German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, who visited the Lithuanian base last month after the German troops arrived, told reporters at an air base in Amari, Estonia, that Germany was committed to ensuring the safety of the region.

German air force units have been stationed in Estonia to provide air defense since 2005 but their presence was increased in 2014 for air policing operations.

“Estonia, and our friends from Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, can rely on us,” von der Leyen said. “We Germans know what it means to be at the eastern border and to have the solid protection of the alliance.”

Von der Leyen and Gabriel both addressed concerns about increasing Russian disinformation campaigns after a fake report surfaced about a Lithuanian being raped by German troops that NATO said was traced to Russia.

“No one expects a real military confrontation to happen here, but what there is, and what has been reported in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, are attempts at massive disinformation and influence campaigns,” Gabriel said.

Von der Leyen said Germany and Europe were seeing clear signs of “efforts to destabilize” similar to Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election reported by U.S. intelligence services.

“That is why it is so important that we investigate these cases, put them on the table and make them public so we can recognize the patterns,” she said.

Russia has categorically denied it ran an influence campaign designed to sway the U.S. presidential election and has dismissed as absurd allegations it intends to meddle in European elections this year.

Such allegations are motivated by a desire to whip up anti-Russian sentiment and are being used by Western politicians to distract voters from pressing domestic problems, says Moscow.

(Reporting by Sabine Siebold in Rukla and David Mardiste in Amari; Writing by Andrea Shalal; editin by Janet Lawrence and Richard Lough)

Police search Berlin properties linked to Christmas market attacker’s mosque

Anis Amri, the Tunisian suspect of the Berlin Christmas market attack, is seen in this photo taken from security cameras at Brussels North train station, Belgium, December 21, 2016. Federal Public Prosecutor's Office/Handout via Reuters.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German police on Tuesday raided more than 20 sites in Berlin with links to a mosque visited by a Tunisian asylum seeker who killed 12 people in an attack on a Christmas market in December.

In the raids, which began at 0500 GMT, some 450 officers searched apartments, two companies’ premises and six prison cells connected to an organisation called “Fussilet 33 e.V.”, which ran the mosque, the police said in a statement.

“The cause for these raids is the fact that Berlin’s state interior ministry has issued a ban against the ‘Fussilet 33’ organisation,” Berlin police spokesman Winfrid Wenzel said.

The Tunisian Anis Amri killed 12 people and injured dozens more on Dec. 19 by driving a truck into a crowded festive market in Berlin. [nL5N1EE5EG] Amri, who pledged allegiance to Islamic State, was shot dead by Italian police in Milan four days later.

Andreas Geisel, interior minister for the state of Berlin, told a news conference that Amri had regularly visited the mosque run by “Fussilet 33 e.V.” including on Dec. 19, only an hour or so before attacking the Christmas market.

The mosque has now been shut down, but Geisel said this was not only because of the Amri connection. Some senior members have been charged or already sentenced for supporting terrorist organisations abroad and preparing acts of violent subversion against the state, he said.

Geisel said Berlin was a cosmopolitan and tolerant city that welcomed people who are persecuted in their home countries or whose lives are in danger, and that should remain the case.

“But people who come here to carry out violent acts or preach violence or who, from Berlin, support organisations that carry out Islamist terrorism in countries like Syria and Iraq or collect money for that, train fighters for jihad, organise trips to these areas and recruit fighters for Islamist terrorism, are not welcome here,” he said.

Geisel said there had so far been no indications that members of the mosque organisation were planning further attacks in Berlin.

On Jan. 31 German police arrested three men on suspicion of having close links to Islamic State militants and planning to travel to the Middle East for combat training. Newspaper Bild reported that those men were frequent visitors at a mosque in the Berlin district of Moabit that Amri also used to visit. [nL5N1FL7DW]

(Reporting by Michelle Martin and Reuters TV; Editing by Louise Ireland and Gareth Jones)

One dead after man drives into crowd in Germany, no sign of terrorism: authorities

By Andreas Burger

HEIDELBERG, Germany (Reuters) – A man died and two other people were injured after a 35-year-old German man drove into a crowd standing near a bakery in the southwestern town of Heidelberg on Saturday, but the authorities said there were no indications that it was a terrorist attack.

The 73-year-old man who died in hospital from his injuries was also German. The two other people injured, a 32-year-old Austrian man and a 29-year-old woman from Bosnia and Herzegovina, also received hospital treatment but were then discharged, police and prosecutors said in a statement.

“Based on investigations so far, there are no signs of a terrorist motive,” they said.

According to the statement, the suspect was seen getting out of the car with a knife and was later tracked down to an old swimming pool. He was taken to a hospital in Heidelberg having been shot by police while being arrested, leaving him seriously injured.

He has since been operated on but nothing further is known about the current state of his health, the police and prosecutors said.

Regional newspaper Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung said the suspect was not fit to be questioned.

Police spokesman Heiko Kranz said experts were gathering evidence such as DNA traces and fingerprints and examining the contents of the car, adding that the suspect would be interviewed if he was fit to be questioned.

Investigations by the public prosecutors’ office in Heidelberg and the town’s criminal police were continuing, police said.

The Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung newspaper said the suspect had stopped at a red traffic light and when it turned green put his foot down before hitting the group of people at high speed and smashing into a pillar.

The German authorities are on high alert after a failed Tunisian asylum-seeker drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin on Dec. 19, killing 12 people.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin, Andreas Kenner and Andreas Burger; Writing by Michelle Martin; Editing by Greg Mahlich)

Tunisia PM, in Germany, dismisses criticism over asylum deportations

Tunisia PM and Germany Chancellor to discuss refugee/migrant issue

BERLIN (Reuters) – Tunisia’s prime minister, in Germany for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel, rejected criticism on Tuesday that his country had been slow to take back failed asylum seekers from Europe, including Berlin Christmas market attacker Anis Amri.

Youssef Chahed also rejected the idea of Tunisia setting up its own asylum centers to ease the burden on Europe.

Shortcomings in the system were exposed in December by the failure to deport Tunisian Islamic State supporter Amri, who was on a watch list and had been denied asylum six months before he killed 12 people by driving a truck through the market.

In an interview in Bild, Chahed said cooperation with Germany on asylum seekers was functioning well.

“The biggest problem for Europe is refugees who go from Libya to Italy,” he said, adding that German authorities needed to provide the correct paperwork to be able to send back failed asylum seekers to Tunisia.

It was largely a delay in getting the right documents, including identity papers, that prevented Amri from being repatriated. He was shot dead by Italian police in Milan on Dec. 23.

“Illegal immigrants who use false papers sometimes make things difficult and prolong the process,” he said.

Asked about the possibility of Tunisia building refugee centers with European help, Chahed said:

“Tunisia is a very young democracy, I don’t think that it can function or that we have capacity to create refugee camps,” he said, adding that the main focus should be finding a solution with Libya.

Merkel has been weakened by her open-door migrant policy which allowed more than a million refugees into Germany in the last two years. She is now trying to show voters she is beefing up security and cracking down on illegal migrants before a national election due in September.

Merkel needs the cooperation of countries like Tunisia to speed up deportations. She also plans to give police greater powers to detain rejected asylum seekers seen as a terrorist threat and to set up ‘federal departure centers’ near airports to house rejected applicants ahead of their deportation.

Chahed visited the site of the December attack by Amri in western Berlin and laid flowers there.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Gareth Jones)

German agency working to clear backlog of 435,000 asylum cases

rejected asylum seeker returns to middle east

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s migration agency hopes to clear a backlog of 435,000 asylum cases within months, the organization’s new director said in an interview with Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper on Wednesday.

Jutta Cordt, who took over as head of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) this month, told the newspaper her top priorities were to accelerate the processing of asylum applications, deepen integration, and step up deportations of those whose applications were denied.

“We carried over 435,000 cases into the new year and we want to have dealt with those this spring,” the paper quoted Cordt as saying.

She told the paper the agency had received 40 million euros ($42.57 million) in additional funding in 2017 to work on repatriation processing and wanted to start that process sooner.

“If there is virtually no prospect for a migrant to stay here, it makes sense to push for an early repatriation and to encourage that financially,” Cordt told the newspaper.

More than a million migrants from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere have arrived in Germany since the beginning of 2015, prompting concerns about security and integration. Polls show that migration will be a key issue in September’s national election.

The issue of repatriation – and better identification of refugees – has taken on new urgency after a spate of Islamist attacks carried out by failed asylum seekers, including Anis Amri, the 24-year-old Tunisian man who rammed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market in December, killing 12 people.

Amri, who was shot dead in Italy, had lived in Germany under at least 14 different names, police have said.

Cordt told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper in a separate interview that local authorities should be taking fingerprints from migrants to better track their identities and avoid multiple asylum applications.

Migrants are currently fingerprinted by police if they cross the German border without a valid passport, then again in a migrant intake center and for a third time when they file an asylum application.

BAMF has said that it has now biometric data on all migrants, but it is not clear how many multiple applications for asylum benefits have been filed.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Alison Williams)

Merkel urges Putin to help end violence in eastern Ukraine

Tanks seen in Ukraine

BERLIN (Reuters) – German leader Angela Merkel urged Russia’s Vladimir Putin in a telephone call on Tuesday to use his influence on separatists in eastern Ukraine to stop the violence there, and the two agreed on the need for new ceasefire efforts, a German government spokesman said.

Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists have both blamed each other for the latest flare-up in a conflict that has killed some 10,000 people since April 2014.

“The German Chancellor and the Russian President agreed that new efforts must be made to secure a ceasefire and asked foreign ministers and their advisers to remain in close contact,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert said.

Merkel and French President Francois Hollande have long tried to broker an end to the conflict but the two-year-old Minsk peace deal has merely locked the two sides in a stalemate.

The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions on Russia. Ukraine and NATO accuse the Kremlin of fuelling the conflict by supporting separatists with troops and weapons – a charge it denies.

The Kremlin, in its description of the Merkel-Putin call, said “serious concerns were expressed in connection with the escalation of the armed conflict resulting in human losses”.

Kiev is nervous that U.S. President Donald Trump will shift the political balance in Russia’s favour and that he may consider lifting sanctions against Moscow.

The fighting in eastern Ukraine broke out a month after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014. The statement from Merkel’s spokesman made no mention of Crimea, although the Chancellor does regularly repeat sharp criticism of the annexation.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Paul Carrel and Mark Trevelyan)

Germany’s Schaeuble admits ‘mistakes’ in refugee policy

Germany's finance minister

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany made mistakes with an open-door policy that saw more than a million migrants enter Germany over the past two years, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble acknowledged on Sunday, but he said Berlin was trying to learn from those missteps.

“We have tried to improve what got away from us in 2015,” Schaeuble told the newspaper Welt am Sonntag. “We politicians are human; we also make mistakes. But one can at least learn from them.”

Schaeuble is a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats, who have lost support to the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party over the migration issue, after several attacks carried out by migrants.

The AfD is now poised to become the third largest party in parliament in September national elections.

The issue has also divided the European Union, with many countries balking at taking in a proportional share of refugees.

Schaeuble said Europe needed to consider harmonising its social benefits to achieve a more equitable distribution of migrants among EU members, a subject that he said had thus far been considered “taboo” in Germany.

“We have much higher standards when it comes to social benefits than most European countries. That’s why so many want to come to Germany,” he told the newspaper.

Schaeuble also said he was skeptical about the leadership style of the U.S. President Donald Trump, who has sparked concerns among European leaders with executive orders on immigration, as well as his decision to cancel trade agreements.

“In America, we can now see how someone is acting as if he can do everything very quickly. That will not only have good results,” he said.

A poll conducted earlier this month showed that refugee policy would be the biggest issue for voters in the September election. [nL5N1EW1C1]

Merkel, who is seeking a fourth term in office, spoke by telephone on Saturday with Trump, who has described her August 2015 decision to keep Germany’s borders open to refugees, mostly from the Middle East, as a “catastrophic mistake.”

In September, after a defeat for her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in a Berlin state election, Merkel said she wished she could turn back the clock on the migrant crisis, although she stopped short of saying her policy was a mistake.

Merkel has rejected calls from the CDU’s Bavarian sister party to set an upper limit on migration, but is now pressing for more aggressive steps to send back migrants who are refused asylum, as well as action to prevent a similar flood of migrant from Africa.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal, editing by Larry King)

Dozens of survivors pay homage to victims of Auschwitz

Survivors walk in remains of Nazi German concentration camps

OSWIECIM, Poland (Reuters) – Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo and some of the last survivors of Auschwitz paid homage to the victims of the Holocaust on Friday, 72 years after the Nazi death camp was liberated in the final throes of World War Two.

At a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe, Szydlo told dozens of people gathered in the camp that the suffering of the victims was a “wound that … can never be healed and should never be forgotten”.

“No one can understand this suffering,” Szydlo said. “I want a message to go out again from this place today that what happened in this German camp was evil … An evil that can be overcome with good. Memory and truth are our responsibility, they are our weapons against evil.”

Nazi German occupation forces set up the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Oswiecim, around 70 km (45 miles) from Poland’s second city, Krakow.

Between 1940 and 1945, Auschwitz developed into a vast complex of barracks, workshops, gas chambers and crematoria.

More than a million people, mainly European Jews, were gassed, shot or hanged at the camp, or died of neglect, starvation or disease, before the Soviet Red Army entered its gates in early 1945 during its decisive advance on Berlin.

Szydlo’s conservative government worries that the world will forget that Auschwitz was a German camp, and has launched a campaign against any mention of “Polish death camps” in international media.

Of the six million Jews who died during the Holocaust, about half had been living in Poland.

(Reporting by Janusz Chmielewski; Writing by Justyna Pawlak; Editing by Lidia Kelly and Kevin Liffey)

German population hits record high of 82.8 million due to migrants

Migrants walk to Germany's customs

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s population grew by some 600,000 last year to reach a record high of 82.8 million people due to the number of migrants who have arrived in the country, the Federal Statistics office said on Friday.

In a preliminary estimate for 2016, the statistics office said the population had eclipsed the previous record high of 82.5 million recorded at the end of 2002, even though the number of deaths in 2016 exceeded the number of births by between 150,000 and 190,000.

Deaths have exceed births in Germany since 1972, with a total of more than 5 million fewer births than deaths.

However, countering that trend, more than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and beyond flocked to Germany in 2015 and 2016, drawn by its strong economy, relatively liberal asylum laws and generous system of benefits.

Since the height of the euro zone debt crisis, Germany is also attracting many migrants from other European countries such as Greece and Spain.

The figures used to calculate net migration were based on numbers signing up at registration offices. Asylum seekers are initially housed in reception centers and generally only registered later.

Steady economic growth since 2010 and generous pro-family policies by successive governments in recent years have helped lift the birth rate but it is still below the death rate.

German government support for refugees has climbed in recent years. For 2016 and 2017 the government set aside 28.7 billion euros ($30.64 billion) in funding to accommodate and integrate the more than one million asylum seekers who entered the country, the ministry said.

(Reporting by Erik Kirschbaum)