French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s claim that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had told him Germany plans to clear Roma camps is a “misunderstanding,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said yesterday.
“The chancellor has ... informed me about what was said in her talks [with Sarkozy],” Westerwelle told Deutschlandfunk radio. “There was no such announcement by the chancellor. It would run contrary to the German Constitution. I suspect that this was all a misunderstanding.”
Sarkozy had made the claim after talks on Thursday with Merkel at a summit of EU leaders in Brussels. Her spokesman swiftly issued a firm rebuttal.
“The topic of Roma in Germany played absolutely no role in talks between the chancellor and the French president,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert told a regular briefing yesterday. “The situation here in Germany is ... in no way comparable to that in France.”
Merkel had initially offered support for Sarkozy, describing a parallel made by EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding between the deportation of Roma from France with persecution of Gypsies and Jews in World War II as “unfortunate.”
For his part, Westerwelle slammed Reding’s comments as “absolutely unacceptable.”
“To tar France with the same brush as the horrific events of World War II is absolutely unacceptable, hurtful and probably led to the French president’s angry reaction,” he said.
France has been under fire for weeks over Sarkozy’s controversial drive to deport ethnic Roma living in traveling communities in France back to Romania and Bulgaria, and Paris now faces the threat of European legal action.
Newspapers in Germany attacked Sarkozy yesterday after his outburst, with one likening him to a “little child.”
“Instead of calming down the rhetoric on the mass Roma deportations, Nicolas Sarkozy behaved at the EU summit like a little child who has been caught lying and now petulantly insists he is telling the truth,” the Financial Times Deutschland said.
Nevertheless, the paper added that “with his outburst, Sarkozy has actually done everyone a favor.”
“If he had behaved diplomatically, then the issue of Roma in the EU would probably have vanished,” but now EU leaders are forced to confront the issue.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that Sarkozy was trying to deflect attention from his domestic problems.
Taiwan’s Lee Chia-hao (李佳豪) on Sunday won a silver medal at the All England Open Badminton Championships in Birmingham, England, a career best. Lee, 25, took silver in the final of the men’s singles against world No. 1 Shi Yuqi (石宇奇) of China, who won 21-17, 21-19 in a tough match that lasted 51 minutes. After the match, the Taiwanese player, who ranks No. 22 in the world, said it felt unreal to be challenging an opponent of Shi’s caliber. “I had to be in peak form, and constantly switch my rhythm and tactics in order to score points effectively,” he said. Lee got
EMBRACING TAIWAN: US lawmakers have introduced an act aiming to replace the use of ‘Chinese Taipei’ with ‘Taiwan’ across all Washington’s federal agencies A group of US House of Representatives lawmakers has introduced legislation to replace the term “Chinese Taipei” with “Taiwan” across all federal agencies. US Representative Byron Donalds announced the introduction of the “America supports Taiwan act,” which would mandate federal agencies adopt “Taiwan” in place of “Chinese Taipei,” a news release on his page on the US House of Representatives’ Web site said. US representatives Mike Collins, Barry Moore and Tom Tiffany are cosponsors of the legislation, US political newspaper The Hill reported yesterday. “The legislation is a push to normalize the position of Taiwan as an autonomous country, although the official US
CHANGE OF TONE: G7 foreign ministers dropped past reassurances that there is no change in the position of the G7 members on Taiwan, including ‘one China’ policies G7 foreign ministers on Friday took a tough stance on China, stepping up their language on Taiwan and omitting some conciliatory references from past statements, including to “one China” policies. A statement by ministers meeting in Canada mirrored last month’s Japan-US statement in condemning “coercion” toward Taiwan. Compared with a G7 foreign ministers’ statement in November last year, the statement added members’ concerns over China’s nuclear buildup, although it omitted references to their concerns about Beijing’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. Also missing were references stressing the desire for “constructive and stable relations with China” and
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said it has lodged a protest with Pretoria after the name of the Taipei Liaison Office in South Africa was changed to the “Taipei Commercial Office” on the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation’s (DIRCO) Web site. In October last year, the South African government asked Taiwan to relocate the Taipei Liaison Office, the nation’s de facto embassy, out of Pretoria. It later agreed to continue negotiating through official channels, but in January asked that the office be relocated by the end of this month. As of the middle of last month, DIRCO’s Web
RSS