Steinmeier visits Chile on South America trip
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier is set to continue his South America trip in Chile on Tuesday.
Steinmeier plans first to open a German-Chilean economic conference and visit the German School in Santiago. Additionally, a visit to the Museum of Memory and Human Rights is on his agenda.
The museum is dedicated to the victims of the military dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990. During this time, there were around 3,000 political murders and more than 30,000 political prisoners in Chile.
A meeting with current President Gabriel Boric is not scheduled until Wednesday. The previous day, Steinmeier met Paraguayan President Santiago Peña in Asunción.
In Santiago, Steinmeier will also meet with those affected by, and experts on, the subject of Colonia Dignidad. The German lay preacher Paul Schäfer moved with his followers from Germany to Chile in the early 1960s and founded a settlement near the city of Parral. For decades, he made the cult members work there without pay until they were exhausted, tore families apart and abused German and Chilean children.
During the military dictatorship under Pinochet, regime opponents were said to have been tortured and murdered at the settlement site.
Today, the area has been renamed Villa Baviera and, among other things, a restaurant operates there. For years, there has been a struggle over the construction of a memorial for the victims of Colonia Dignidad in Chile.
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Yahoo
31 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Europe scrambles to revive diplomacy after the US strikes Iran's nuclear sites
LONDON (AP) — European nations worked Monday to keep diplomatic efforts to curb the Israel-Iran war alive as the two countries traded strikes following the United States' weekend attack on Iran's nuclear program. Calls for Tehran to enter talks with Washington appeared to fall on deaf ears as it reached out to ally Russia for support. The crisis topped the agenda for European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, where diplomats agonized about the potential for Iranian retaliation to spark a wider war and global economic instability. 'The concerns of retaliation and this war escalating are huge,' said the bloc's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas. Kallas said any attempt by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz, a key route for global shipping, would be 'extremely dangerous and not good for anybody.' Europe seeks more talks Along with the EU, the 'E3' of Britain, France and Germany have led efforts to find a diplomatic solution, holding a tense seven-hour meeting in Geneva on Friday with Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. A day after those talks ended with a vague promise to "meet again in the future,' U.S. bombers struck three Iranian nuclear and military sites. No further E3 talks with Iran are currently planned, a European diplomatic official said on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations. Still, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy urged Iran to meet the E3 again, and to open negotiations with the United States. Planned U.S.-Iran talks in Oman were scuttled after Israel began attacking Iran's nuclear facilities on June 13. Iran has since ruled out negotiating while it is under attack. 'Take the off-ramp, dial this thing down and negotiate with the United States immediately and seriously," said Lammy, who spoke to both Araghchi and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Europe had a role to play, but that 'a real precondition for a settlement to the conflict is that Iran be ready to negotiate directly with the U.S.' Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told reporters in Brussels that he was proposing a meeting between the United States and Iran in Rome. Iran's envoy visits Russia It was Moscow that Iran reached out to Monday, though, sending Araghchi to meet President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin. Putin condemned the United States' 'unprovoked aggression' against Iran and said Russia would help the Iranian people. Putin said he saw the visit as a chance to explore 'how we can get out of today's situation.' Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia had offered to mediate. European diplomatic efforts were complicated by a lack of foreknowledge of the Trump administration's moves. Some countries had no advance notice of the strikes. Britain was notified, but only shortly before bombs fell. Another hurdle was Trump's post on social media late Sunday musing about the potential for 'regime change' in Iran, despite U.S. officials' insistence that Washington is not seeking to change the government in Tehran. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot stressed Monday that 'we reject all attempts to organize a change of regime by force.' 'It would be illusory and dangerous to think that such a change can be provoked through force and bombs,' he said. Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only, and U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Tehran is not actively pursuing a bomb. However, Trump and Israeli leaders have argued that Iran could quickly assemble a nuclear weapon, making it an imminent threat. Mixed emotions among US allies The U.S. strikes have brought mixed emotions in European capitals. Amid alarm at the potential for a wider war and calls for de-escalation, some American allies expressed relief that Iran's nuclear program had been set back. 'We can't pretend that the prevention of Iran getting nuclear weapons isn't a good thing for this country. But we're prioritizing diplomacy as the way forward,' said Tom Wells, a spokesman for British leader Starmer. 'The prime minister's priority is getting parties back around the table to negotiate a lasting settlement.' German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose country is a particularly staunch ally of Israel, said he saw 'no reason to criticize what Israel began a week ago, and also no reason to criticize what America did last weekend.' He acknowledged 'it is not without risk, but leaving things the way they were was also not an option.' Merz said he was 'somewhat optimistic' that the conflict would not widen. He said Iran's response so far has been far short 'of what we had to fear,' and that Iran's regional proxies had shown 'relatively little' reaction so far. But he cautioned that 'it doesn't have to stay that way.' ___ Joyner reported from Brussels. Associated Press writers Elise Morton in London, Lorne Cook and Sam McNeil in Brussels, John Leicester in Paris, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Stephanie Liechtenstein in Vienna contributed. Jill Lawless And Ella Joyner, The Associated Press Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Yahoo
World leaders call for deescalation after US bombs Iran
World capitals reacted to the surprise US attack on Iranian nuclear sites with a mix of calls for restraint and statements of condemnation. Trump had indicated on Friday he would make a decision in the next two weeks as to whether the US would bomb Iran in support of Israel, but the suddenness of the weekend strikes suggested that deadline was a red herring, with The Atlantic reporting that the president had already made up his mind last week. As the impact of the strikes was still being assessed Sunday, European and Gulf leaders appeared united in calls for diplomacy and restraint, while Iran's longtime allies, China and Russia, criticized the aerial assault as a gross escalation that could lead to further war. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose foreign minister met with Iran's top diplomat last week as part of European efforts to avert the strikes, in a post on X urged Iran 'to return to the negotiating table and reach a diplomatic solution to end this crisis.' The plea for diplomacy was echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who in his own social media post Sunday called for restraint from Tehran and a return to 'dialogue,' as well as a commitment by Iran to renounce nuclear weapons. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called on Iran to 'immediately begin negotiations with the US and Israel' to find a diplomatic resolution. The German government believes 'significant parts' of Tehran's nuclear program were impacted in the strikes, but a precise assessment was not immediately possible. The European Union also echoed bloc leaders' calls for restraint, with the EU's top diplomat Kaja Kallas writing on social media that she urged 'all sides to step back, return to the negotiating table and prevent further escalation.' European Council President Antonio Costa said the bloc would work with allies to find a 'peaceful solution' to the conflict, and stressed the human toll of further possible attacks: 'Too many civilians will once again be the victims of a further escalation,' he said. United Nations chief António Guterres said in a statement that he was 'gravely alarmed by the use of force by the United States against Iran,' adding that the strikes represented a 'dangerous escalation' for the region. 'There is no military solution. The only path forward is diplomacy. The only hope is peace,' Guterres said, calling on UN members to deescalate the conflict. The UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Sunday that it found no increase in off-site radiation levels after the strikes on the nuclear facilities, and that it would continue to monitor the situation. The UN Security Council was expected to meet later on Sunday to discuss the situation. China's foreign ministry said Sunday that Beijing 'strongly condemns' the US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, accusing Washington of violating international law and escalating regional tensions. 'China calls on all parties to the conflict, especially Israel, to cease fire as soon as possible,' the ministry said in a statement, adding that Beijing was 'willing to work with the international community to uphold justice and restore peace and stability in the Middle East.' Russia's Foreign Ministry said Moscow 'strongly condemned' the strikes, echoing China's accusation that they represented 'a gross violation of international law, the U.N. Charter, and U.N. Security Council resolutions.' Senior Kremlin official and former president Dmitry Medvedev went further, suggesting Trump's decision to strike Iran had 'started a new war for the U.S.,' and that the Iranian regime would likely be strengthened by Washington's involvement. In a post on X, Medvedev, who is the deputy chair of Russian President Vladimir Putin's Security Council, indicated that a 'number of countries' could also decide to supply Tehran with nuclear weapons following the US strikes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the US strikes, saying they were carried out 'in full coordination' with Israel. He said US President Donald Trump's leadership 'created a pivot of history that can help lead the Middle East and beyond to a future of prosperity and peace.' Netanyahu's main political opponents also praised the operation: Opposition party leader Yair Lapid dismissed critics of the strikes as 'useful idiots.' Saudi Arabia — a longtime rival of Iran's which has in recent months seen slightly improved ties with Tehran — voiced 'deep concern' over the targeting of the Iranian nuclear sites, and reiterated prior remarks which 'condemned and denounced the violation of the sovereignty' of Iran. It urged restraint and de-escalation. Qatar — the globe's third largest exporter of LNG — regretted the 'deterioration of the situation' in its 'sisterly' nation of Iran and called for an immediate cease in hostilities. However, a statement from its foreign ministry notably did not mention who conducted the attacks. Abu Dhabi said the strikes threatened to pull the region 'into deeper levels of instability' and stressed the need for immediate de-escalation. The foreign ministry called on members of the United Nations' Security Council to 'uphold their responsibilities' in response to the hostilities. Oman, which sits across the Strait of Hormuz from Iran and has hosted talks between Washington and Tehran over Iran's nuclear program, said it 'deplores' the US strikes, which it characterized as an 'illegal aggression,' adding that the attack contravened international agreements allowing Iran to develop a 'peaceful' nuclear program. The Kingdom of Bahrain called for negotiations to restart between the US and Iran, adding that a diplomatic approach 'is essential to restoring regional peace and security and to protecting the peoples of the region from the consequences of war,' according to the state news agency. The country, which is home to a US military base, urged civilian drivers to avoid main roads Sunday as a precaution: Tehran has previously indicated it would consider attacking regional US military bases if Washington decided to strike the country.
Politico
a day ago
- Politico
How Germany Changed Its Mind About America, Thanks to Donald Trump
Five days after his election victory in February, Friedrich Merz's world collapses. That's how he will describe it later. That Friday evening, he steps off the stage at a large conference center in Hamburg's port, where cruise ships usually moor. He has just been hailed as 'the future federal chancellor,' and more than a thousand party supporters have cheered on their chairman at a rally of the local chapter of the Christian Democratic Union, Germany's main center-right party. At around 8:15 p.m., he shakes a few hands in farewell, then drops into the backseat of his official car for the three-hour drive home. It is February 28, 2025. Merz checks his phone and notices a message from his spokesperson. He should watch a video, preferably immediately. Merz pulls out his iPad, opens the link, and recognizes a room familiar to anyone who follows politics. Two armchairs upholstered in gold damask sit in front of a fireplace with no fire burning. In front of the fireplace is a table made of fine wood inlaid with an oversized seal. It's the Oval Office in the White House. To Donald Trump's right sits a small, bearded man in a black military sweater embroidered with a stylized trident, the national symbol of Ukraine. It is Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, a country invaded by Russia. Merz holds him in high esteem. Merz has visited Zelenskyy twice in Kyiv and, just a few days ago, accepted Zelenskyy's congratulations on his election victory. Ukraine has high hopes for Merz. The new chancellor is expected to finally provide the Taurus, a German cruise missile capable of penetrating bunkers, which Merz's more liberal predecessor as chancellor, Olaf Scholz, refused to provide throughout his time in office. In the video, Zelenskyy looks tired. Tired and helpless. Merz is dismayed as he watches the U.S. president humiliate his Ukrainian counterpart. Trump accuses him of endangering millions of lives and risking a third world war. When Zelenskyy retorts that it was Russian President Vladimir Putin who started the war, Trump interjects harshly. In front of the cameras, Zelenskyy is scolded like a naughty child for several minutes. 'Did you ever say thank you?' Vice President JD Vance asks Zelenskyy, hurling this question at him several times. 'That was good television,' Trump says at the end of the meeting. The subsequent talks, which were supposed to be about security guarantees after a ceasefire, are canceled. A fully negotiated raw materials agreement is not signed. The celebratory lunch is canceled. Zelenskyy waits another 20 minutes in an adjoining room. Then, an official appears and simply sends him away. Merz has just finished watching the nearly 40-minute scene when he posts a solidarity message to Zelenskyy in English on X: 'We must never confuse the aggressor with the victim in this war!' He is on the phone nonstop in the car until he arrives in Sauerland and then for half the night. He also speaks with Scholz, who would still be chancellor for another two months. Scholz and his designated successor agree that something historic happened that day in Washington. The Americans are threatening not only to abandon Ukraine but also all their allies. Is Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which requires every member to come to the defense of every other member, still to be taken seriously? Would U.S. soldiers defend Germany against a Russian attack? Are American nuclear missiles still a credible deterrent? The two men agree that given these circumstances, Germany must rebuild its national defenses. As quickly as possible and at whatever cost. And it will cost a lot, between 1 and 1.5 trillion euros over the next 12 years — double the previous amount. Spending that much money on defense isn't easy. In Germany, the 'Schuldenbremse' or 'debt brake' is a fiscal rule enshrined in the Constitution. It is designed to limit the amount of new government debt to a maximum of 0.35 percent of gross domestic product. Before the elections, Merz campaigned on keeping the debt brake and insisted as chancellor he could do without extra debt. But in the coming days, Merz will flip his position and agree to this new borrowing. The humiliation of Zelenskyy has changed everything. This account of the election of Merz and his first days as Germany's incoming chancellor is based on more than 50 conversations with sources, some close to Merz, who were granted anonymity to speak freely. Merz's doubts about his prior convictions had been building for weeks. A few days before the general election, Merz met with Vance in Munich. Merz wanted to dissuade the American vice president from publicly urging Germans to vote for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. 'These are not friends of America,' Merz said, 'but partisans of Putin.' Vance nodded in apparent agreement. Just a few hours later, during his speech at the Munich Security Conference, Vance stunned the audience. He declared that restrictions on freedom of speech in the EU are a greater threat than Russia or China. He called for firewalls to be torn down across Europe and for right-wing populists to be included in politics. The vice president did not mention the AfD by name. However, a few hours later, reports circulated that Vance had met with not only Merz, but also with AfD leader Alice Weidel at his hotel before the speech. He had not told Merz about this meeting. Even then, two weeks before Zelenskyy's humiliation in the Oval Office and one week before the Bundestag elections, Merz had begun privately considering the need for Germany to take on additional billions in debt. 'What the new American president, Donald Trump, has said in Washington these last few days…' he told the audience from the campaign stage in Hamburg, 'Ladies and gentlemen, we are witnessing a fundamental shift in the global political landscape.' Following the Munich Security Conference, Merz discreetly asked former Constitutional Court judge Udo Di Fabio to explore whether it would be possible to amend Germany's Basic Law with the votes of the outgoing Bundestag. The 'Basic Law' is Germany's equivalent of a constitution. It can only be changed by a two-thirds majority in parliament. That also applies to the debt brake. Getting a two-thirds vote would be possible with the old Bundestag, but not the new Bundestag that was expected to have a higher representation of AfD and other fringe parties. Shortly afterwards, Di Fabio sent him his expert opinion. Amendments to the Basic Law with the votes of MPs who had already been voted out of office were possible up to 30 days after the election. That would be March 25, the same day the new Bundestag would be seated. Merz would have less than a month to execute an about-face. On the day of the election, Merz gave the first public signal that his thinking was changing when he appeared with other candidates on the Berliner Runde, a television program in which party leaders comment on the election as soon as the polls close. 'For me, it will therefore be an absolute priority to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,' he said. Independence from the USA? Scholz, sitting right next to Merz on TV, could hardly believe it. Until now, European politicians had carefully avoided suggesting that Europe could manage its defense without the Americans. Germany, which has neither its own nuclear weapons nor a robust army, needs American troops and their nuclear umbrella more than anyone. Merz, considered a staunch transatlanticist, was giving up on the USA? 'Since U.S. President Donald Trump's statements last week, it has been clear to me that this administration is largely indifferent to the fate of Europe,' Merz continued. A summit of the transatlantic military alliance is scheduled for the end of June. 'Will we even be talking about NATO in its current form then?' he asked. 'Or will we then have to establish an independent European defense capability much more quickly?' The next day, when the election results had been tallied, Merz praised the outcome in a press conference: 29 percent was much less than the Christian Democrats had hoped for, but Merz argued it was a success if you look at the number of votes rather than percentage points. The Christian Democrats gained 2.5 million votes compared to the previous Bundestag election, and the Christian Socialists gained 500,000, he noted. What he failed to mention is that the AfD gained over 6 million votes. After an election campaign more polarizing than any in decades, more people turned out to vote than in previous years, and the AfD was the beneficiary. Merz was genuinely outraged by the scene in the Oval Office. But he also knew he could use this indignation to his advantage. After all, he would need a credible narrative to justify the political turnaround, the astronomical increase in defense spending, that will take place under his leadership. The election results meant that, for the first time since World War II, centrist parties no longer have a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Without a two-thirds majority, centrist parties cannot elect judges to the Federal Constitutional Court, declare war on an invader or amend the Basic Law. For example, to reform the debt brake. The situation is reminiscent of the late phase of the Weimar Republic. At that time, the National Socialists and Communists together held over 50 percent of the seats in the Reichstag, preventing the Social Democrats, Liberals and Christian Democrats from governing effectively — thus fueling growing frustration with democracy. This created a vicious circle that led to the collapse of the first republic at the beginning of the 1930s. Is this a bold comparison? The AfD and other fringe parties already control a blocking minority in the state parliaments of three German states: Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg. The same will be true in the Bundestag when the new MPs are seated March 25. Scholz also played a role in urging Merz's turnaround. In meetings unnoticed by the public, Scholz and Merz met several times in the chancellor's office after the Bundestag elections, sometimes with other center-right politicians present. At one of these meetings, Scholz presented intelligence service findings on the immense scale of the Russian arms buildup. Despite the enormous losses in Ukraine, Putin would have considerably more tanks and missiles in just a few years than before the invasion. The intelligence suggested he is preparing to wage another war, this time against Europe. Scholz, who campaigned as a peace chancellor, advised his successor to do the opposite: to massively rearm. Germany's new government coalition joined Merz's Christian Democrats with Scholz's Social Democrats. In the days after the election, the coalition partners convened private negotiations to reach a spending plan they could implement before March 25. In those talks, the sums involved increased by the hour. On March 4, when the partners reappeared in public to announce their deal, there was great astonishment. There were no longer any limits to rearmament. Merz secured special funds for a defense build-up over the next 10 years that were five times larger than an increase Scholz negotiated just three years ago. An additional special fund of 500 billion euros had been agreed upon for rebuilding the country's infrastructure. Why was Merz, the avowed debt hawk, now so willing to push Germany so deep into debt? 'In view of the threats to our freedom and peace on our continent, the same must now apply to our defense: Whatever it takes!' Merz said at a press conference. The saying was a quote from Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank, who used this slogan in 2012 to scare off speculators who wanted to bet on a breakup of the eurozone. Now Merz used the same quote to explain his rearmament plan. At a parliamentary group meeting later that day, Merz reported that he would be traveling to Brussels to take part in the meeting of the heads of state and government of the EU Council. And then he said something curious: 'If Trump announces his withdrawal from NATO tonight, then we, the Federal Republic of Germany, will be the first to have reacted correctly in advance.' There was horror among the MPs. Merz was deadly serious. The total turnaround in financial policy began after the shock appearance by Vance at the Munich Security Conference. Merz justified it by pointing to the humiliation of Zelenskyy at the White House. But now he was talking about an imminent U.S. withdrawal from NATO. How did Merz get this idea? Trump was set to give his first speech to a joint session of Congress that same night. Merz explained to close allies later that he had received information from an American source indicating that Trump would use the speech to announce a U.S. withdrawal from the Western defense alliance. He had reason to trust his source. Two weeks earlier, the source had provided him with advance information on Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference. Merz held a conference call the night before the speech and warned Christian Democratic leaders that Vance would shake the transatlantic friendship and launch a rhetorical attack on Europe. That is exactly what happened. Merz and his allies were prepared. Warned once again, Merz expected the worst from Trump's speech to Congress. During conversations and phone calls with confidants, he made it even clearer than he had in the parliamentary group meeting that if Trump announced a NATO withdrawal that night, Putin might react immediately with an attack on the Baltic states. During those hours when he agreed Germany should take on a trillion-euro debt, Merz was acting on the belief that a new war in Europe was possible and NATO was on the brink of collapse. His vote in favor of the record debt came against this dramatic backdrop. As we know, things turned out differently. Trump delivered his congressional speech but did not mention a withdrawal from NATO. To this day, Merz does not believe that his Washington source misinformed him. The NATO withdrawal announcement had been prepared, he believes. Trump changed his mind at the last minute. (POLITICO Magazine asked the White House to respond to the assertion that Trump had considered using his March 4 speech to a joint session of Congress to announce a U.S. withdrawal from NATO. In an emailed statement, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said, 'Such an announcement was never included in any draft of any speech.')
