German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he must accept that US President Donald Trump does not share his opinions to work with the United States within Nato but stressed there \u200cwas no link between their rift and a planned troop drawdown.<\/p>\n
Merz dismissed suggestions that his criticism of US war planning in Iran had sparked Washington\u2019s Friday announcement that the US would reduce its military presence in Germany, its largest European base, by 5,000 soldiers, and repeated his commitment to the transatlantic alliance.<\/p>\n
Merz had questioned whether Trump \u2060had an exit plan for the Middle East and said the US was being \u201cembarrassed\u201d in \u200ctalks with Iran. Trump later called Merz an \u201cineffectual\u201d leader.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to accept that the American president has a different view on these issues than \u200cwe do. But that does not change the fact that I remain convinced \u2060that the Americans \u2060are important partners for us,\u201d Merz told public broadcaster ARD in an interview set to be broadcast later on \u200cSunday.<\/p>\n
Asked whether US plans to reduce its troop presence in Germany had anything to do with the spat between the \u200ctwo leaders, \u200cMerz said: \u201cThere is no connection.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump called for a reduced US military presence in \u200cGermany already during his first term and has repeatedly called on Europeans to take greater responsibility \u2060for their own security.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he must accept that US President Donald Trump does not share his opinions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9286,18,479,9287,393,5,253,8472,381,478,1831,80,9285,481,7937],"class_list":{"0":"post-10024","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-ard","9":"tag-berlin","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-europeans","12":"tag-friedrich-merz","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-iran","15":"tag-joe-biden","16":"tag-middle-east","17":"tag-nato","18":"tag-russia","19":"tag-sunday","20":"tag-tomahawk-missiles","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-washington"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}