Merkel on Hill for Wall anniversary

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By Tom LoBianco

German Chancellor Angela Merkel marked next week's 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall with a speech to Congress on Tuesday calling for a new global financial order and for wealthy nations to make a climate-change deal next month in Copenhagen.

Mrs. Merkel also called for harsh economic sanctions against Iran if it does not cooperate with international nuclear inspectors, and said that the safety of Israel is "non-negotiable." The chancellor was largely circumspect about her country's involvement in Afghanistan, saying that Germany would "shoulder" its responsibility, without saying whether that meant committing more troops to the international effort.

The center-right chancellor, recently elected to a new term in office, lauded American efforts to reunify her country and reminisced about growing up in East Germany longing for such Western goods as American-made jeans during the Cold War.

International leaders are set to commemorate the anniversary in Berlin next week, although President Obama will not be there because of a planned trip to Asia and his domestic priorities, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday.

While the German leader's remarks drew standing ovations just under a dozen times, her calls for action on climate change were received coolly by many Republicans who sat while their Democratic counterparts stood and cheered.

"We can already see now where this wasteful attitude toward our future leads: Icebergs are melting in the Arctic. In Africa, people become refugees because their environment has been destroyed. The global sea level is rising," Mrs. Merkel said.

House Democrats have passed their version of a climate-change bill - which would cap carbon dioxide emissions, among many other things - but Senate leaders have struggled to move climate legislation.

Global negotiators meet next month in Copenhagen to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto climate-change pact. Mr. Obama has not committed to attending, but former Vice President Al Gore predicted Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America" that the president would be there.

China, India and other developing nations must be brought to the table to strike a final agreement and the ultimate goal of global climate negotiators must be to cap global temperature increases at no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, Mrs. Merkel said.

"To achieve this, we need the readiness of all countries to accept internationally binding obligations. We cannot afford missing the objectives in climate protection that science tells us have to be met," she said.

Mrs. Merkel also met with Mr. Obama earlier in the morning. Mr. Obama said the two NATO allies share a common mission "to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan and to create the environment in which the Afghan people themselves can provide for their own security."

Mr. Obama has yet to say whether he will send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, a decision his aides have said he will make known in "the coming weeks."

Mrs. Merkel also declined to say whether she would deploy more German troops to the war, and instead focused on accelerating a transfer of power by international forces to a stable Afghan government.

In her congressional remarks, the German leader said the recent international financial crisis underscored the need for a "global framework of rules" addressing financial markets.

"We must not give into the temptations of protectionism," Mrs. Merkel said in her speech, which was delivered largely in German. "Without global rules or transparency and supervision, we will not gain more freedom, but rather risk the abuse of freedom and thus risk instability."