How small is the common denominator?

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Diplomatic hard work prior to the start of the G20 summit: hostess Angela Merkel, looking for compromises in controversial issues in a personal conversation with Donald Trump.

Those who know Merkel’s facial Expressions, the idea immediately: This G20 Meeting is also for you, which is hardened by countless international summits, a major challenge. The positions are apart, especially when it comes to climate protection and trade policy. The USA made scissors, the consensus of 20 leading industrial and emerging countries.

As a hostess, Merkel had hoped, the Hamburg summit will be the crowning highlight of the German presidency of the G20. Now the German Delegation bakes long for smaller buns: Merkel leads tirelessly preliminary discussions to find a common denominator and if it is a small one.

The summit of the compromises

The consensus of the G20’s history, since the United States have denounced the Paris climate agreement and a restrictive trade policy to propagate. The key issues for the G20, which decide your final documents always unanimously. So what is want to do, to Merkel, to come to at the end of a compromise?

In the evening, the Chancellor discussed for about an hour with US President Donald Trump, previously, during a state visit to Warsaw by the poles had to celebrate. In the prestigious Hotel Atlantic in Hamburg, it went between the two nothing less than the salvation of the summit should not end in a dispute. Foreign policy focal points were made – the controversial missile tests in North Korea, the situation in the Middle East and the conflict in Eastern Ukraine.

Merkel and Trump had spoken in the Hotel Atlantic, first for 20 minutes under four eyes. Thereafter, the two foreign Ministers Sigmar Gabriel and Rex Tillerson as well as trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner took part in the conversation. It was “friendly and open-minded,” Gabriel said to this part of the conversation. The issues of trade and climate protection, however, remained in dispute.

To Saturday of the G20 summit convenes in the Hamburg exhibition halls

19:1 in the area of climate protection

It does not apply to paper over differences that had Merkel declared before the summit. Also Minister of foreign Affairs Gabriel had strongly advised not to do in Hamburg on “peace, joy, pancakes”, just so you can do that is “Wishy-Washy”.

At the Paris climate agreement for all countries except the United States. This process was “irreversible”, – stated in a first draft of the final communiqué. It will not therefore be broken up and renegotiated. The final document could include the withdrawal of the USA from the climate agreement as fact and, moreover, a very General commitment to climate protection, to formulate, which could support Donald Trump. Such a Manifest of disagreement would be a novelty in the history of the G20.

After all, The cooperation with the American negotiators were constructive, you can hear in the exhibition halls. Your goal is to achieve a “Win-Win-Situation”, Merkel said after her arrival in Hamburg, where on the Friday morning of the summit starts. “The Sherpas have two more nights,” she added and looked even a little exhausted.

A highly charged Meeting

Dynamite also holds the first personal Meeting between Trump and the Russian President Putin during the summit – in a time of tension between the two countries to a new height. Russia show behavior of a “destabilising”, Trump criticized in Warsaw and the Poland of the protection against powerful neighbors, American missiles of the type “Patriot” is sold. The question of whether she wanted to mediate between Putin and Trump, denied hostess Angela Merkel. She wanted to only make a contribution to the solution of the problems – and there are at this summit more than enough.