Merkel Tells Congress Afghan Handover Strategy Needed (Update1)

Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the world must look for a handover strategy in Afghanistan and pledged “zero tolerance” for a nuclear-armed Iran, saying Europe and the U.S. are strongest when they tackle global threats together.

Merkel, addressing a joint session of the House of Representatives and Senate in Washington today, said that the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan “must be taken to the next phase” as soon as a new Afghan government is in office.

“The goal must be to develop a handover strategy for responsibilities, which we want to develop at a UN conference early next year,” Merkel said. “We will be successful if we continue to take every step in the alliance jointly.”

Merkel, making the first speech to Congress by a German chancellor in more than 50 years, stressed common bonds between Europe and the U.S and the need for global action to counter international threats from terrorism to climate change. She touched on German responsibility for the Holocaust, the country’s postwar path to democracy and the 1990 reunification.

Beginning and ending with comments in English, Merkel spoke about her early days growing up in communist East Germany, and praised the U.S. for its role in helping achieve reunification after the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago on Nov. 9.

‘Beyond my Imagination’

“At that time it was beyond my imagination even to travel to the United States of America, let alone stand here one day,” she said. Merkel, who professed a love for American jeans as a young girl, said she learned about the U.S. from films and books, some of them “smuggled from the West by relatives.”

“I was excited about the American Dream: The possibility for anyone to succeed, to achieve something through one’s own effort.”

She also talked of the Holocaust and the wartime “devastation and extermination that Germany unleashed on Europe and the world.” Nov. 9 is also the anniversary of the so-called Kristallnacht in 1938, when Nazis attacked Jewish businesses and synagogues and arrested Jews. “I cannot stand before you here today without commemorating the victims of this day and the Shoa,” Merkel said.

Addressing the threat to the region posed by Iran’s nuclear ambitions, she won applause when she said that Israel’s security “can never be negotiable.”

Iran held United Nations-brokered talks last month with the U.S., Russia and France on a proposal to provide nuclear fuel for a medical-research reactor in Tehran in an effort to stop its uranium-enrichment program, which it says is for domestic electricity production.

‘Knows the Limits’

“Iran knows our offer, but Iran also knows the limits,” Merkel said. “There can be no nuclear weapon in the hands of an Iranian president who denies the Holocaust and threatens Israel.”

In confronting the threats of international terrorism, “we know that no country, however strong it may be, can do this alone,” Merkel said. “We’re only strong as a community of partners.”

President Barack Obama is weighing sending more troops to Afghanistan just as Merkel faces pressure from her government coalition partner to set a deadline for withdrawing German troops. Hamid Karzai was appointed to a second term as Afghan president yesterday after his challenger pulled out of a Nov. 7 runoff.

Germany has about 4,200 troops in Afghanistan as part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s International Security Assistance Force, the third- biggest contingent after the U.S. and U.K.

Climate Change Race

While praising Obama and the Democratic-led Congress for seeking to swing the U.S. behind the fight against global warming, she said there’s “no time to lose,” again winning applause from the lawmakers present.

“We need an agreement at the climate conference in December in Copenhagen,” she said. “That requires the readiness of all countries to accept binding international commitments.”

Merkel, who is in the U.S. less than a week into her second term, was invited to deliver the speech by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She’s the first German chancellor to have that honor since Konrad Adenauer in 1957.

Obama congratulated Merkel on her Sept. 27 election victory before they held talks at the White house today, calling her an “extraordinary leader” on climate change.

The U.S. and others “are all beginning to recognize why it is so important that we work in common, in order to stem the potential catastrophe that could result if we continue to see global warming continuing unabated,” Obama told reporters.

Merkel said that “the world will be look at us, at Europe and America” during the UN’s December meeting in Copenhagen to replace the Kyoto Protocol after it expires in 2012. “It’s true that without obligations from China and India, nothing will happen. But if we in Europe and America are prepared to make obligations, we will convince India and China.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Czuczka in Berlin at aczuczka@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net