German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived
Friday at the G20 meeting in Osaka amid fears over her health after she
suffered a second public bout of uncontrollable shaking in just over a week.
The G7 summit ended in farce and a
renewed threat of global trade war on Saturday as US President Donald Trump
abruptly rejected the text of a consensus statement and bitterly insulted the Canadian host.
Chancellor Angela Merkel refused on Monday to put her name to a joint EU statement that would have declared the Balkan route closed to refugees, as tens of thousands of asylum seekers remain stranded in Greece.
Abandoned by France, defied by eastern Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel cuts a lonely figure in her struggle for EU "solidarity" on the refugee crisis ahead of a Brussels summit.
At a hastily-convened summit in Brussels that continued late into the night on Wednesday, EU leaders agreed on spending and strategy for the coming months to try and lighten the load on countries most heavily burdened by the refugee crisis.
Chancellor Angela Merkel is planning a long tour of the US in April in order to improve strained relations between the US and Europe, according to a magazine report. She will also attend a nuclear weapons security summit.
Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Afghanistan on Monday, following a key NATO summit, to meet German troops stationed in the north of the war-torn country, officials announced.
President Barack Obama praised NATO on Saturday for committing up to 5,000 more troops to Afghanistan, singling out commitments from France and Germany as proof of their "seriousness of purpose."
Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel was snubbed by Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi on Saturday when he continued a mobile phone call instead of greeting Merkel and posing for a group photo with NATO's other 27 leaders on a bridge spanning the Rhine river.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Peer SteinbrĂĽck are lobbying for tighter global finance cooperation and regulation at the Washington G20 economic summit this weekend.
