‘US, UK no longer reliable partners’

Fate into our hands: Merkel

FRANKFURT AM MAIN, May 28, (Agencies): Europe “must take its fate into its own hands” faced with a western alliance divided by Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidency, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday.

“The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I’ve experienced that in the last few days,” Merkel told a crowd at an election rally in Munich, southern Germany.

“We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands,” she added.

While Germany and Europe would strive to remain on good terms with America and Britain, “we have to fight for our own destiny,” Merkel went on.

Special emphasis was needed on warm relations between Berlin and newly-elected French President Emmanuel Macron, she said.

The chancellor had just returned from a G7 summit which wound up Saturday without a deal between the US and the other six major advanced nations on upholding the 2015 Paris climate accords.

Merkel on Saturday labelled the result of the “six against one” discussion “very difficult, not to say very unsatisfactory”.

The US president tweeted that he would reveal whether or not the US would stick to the global emissions deal -- which he pledged to jettison on the campaign trail -- only next week.

On a previous leg of his first trip abroad as president, Trump had repeated past criticism of NATO allies for failing to meet the defensive alliance’s military spending commitment of 2.0 percent of GDP.

Trump also reportedly described German trade practices as “bad, very bad,” in Brussels talks last week, complaining that Europe’s largest economy sells too many cars to the US.

Merkel

Conservative bloc lead widens:

A poll of German voters shows Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc’s lead widening as the main challenger Social Democrats continue to lose support.

The Emnid Sunday poll for Bild newspaper showed support for Merkel’s bloc unchanged at 38 percent, while the SPD support dropped 1 percentage point to 25 percent. The SPD got a boost after nominating Martin Schulz in January as Merkel’s rival for chancellor in September’s election, but has slipped recently after several state election losses.

Troop withdrawal from Turkey: Germany,

whose relations with Turkey have been strained by a series of rows, will decide within two weeks whether to withdraw troops deployed at Turkey’s Incirlik air force base, a German Foreign Ministry official said on Sunday.

Roughly 250 German troops are based at Incirlik to help in the fight against Islamic State militants.

Germany said last week it was considering moving its soldiers from Incirlik to Jordan or another country in the region because the Turkish government refuses to grant German lawmakers access to the site.

Ties between NATO allies Germany and Turkey have deteriorated sharply after a succession of diplomatic rows.