KEHL AM RHEIN, Germany, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- A trip to Washington clouded by secret CIA flights, a German national kidnapped in Iraq and fierce domestic attacks of her reform plans: The first week in office has been a tough one for new German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
On Wednesday, Merkel gave the speech commentators call the "government declaration" - her first major address to parliament, eight days after she succeeded Gerhard Schroeder to become Germany's first woman chancellor, heading a right-left government of conservatives and Social Democrats.
In her hour-long speech, she presented the plans of her grand coalition, an alliance to solve Germany's most pressing economic problems.
"We want to create the conditions for Germany once again to be among the first three in Europe in 10 years," Merkel told lawmakers. "Let's release the breaks on growth ... let's show what we can achieve."
Roughly 4.77 million Germans are without work. The country's strong export sector is the only reason the German economy still shows growth, albeit a very low one. The federal deficit is ever-mounting, and Merkel has already announced 2006 will not be a year to expect change.
Merkel said Germans had to accept unpopular measures, such as an increase in the sales tax between 16 percent to 19 percent, higher taxes for the rich and the abolition of subsidies for first-time homeowners.
But Guido Westerwelle, leader of the Free Democrats and of the parliamentary opposition, attacked Merkel for not following through with the big overhaul she had promised to launch.
"What you are doing amounts to no more than a policy of baby steps," he said. "That is too little in the age of globalization."
Fritz Kuhn of the Green party said Merkel's reform program was "nothing more than a risky bet on a positive economic cycle in the future."
Merkel introduced her foreign policy agenda, commenting on most major issues in the world.
She said she wanted to better ties with Washington, aim for a resolution of the European Union's ongoing budget conflict, help getting an EU constitution adopted, and said both Israelis and Palestinians had a right to their own state.
During her speech, Merkel pledged an "open and honest" dialogue with the Islamic world. "Dialogue with Islam carries great significance ... we have to learn to understand each other," she said. "We will do this in an open and honest way. We will not brush aside differences, but name them clearly."
In Germany, forced marriages and the so-called 'honor killings' of women had to stop, she said.
"Both have nothing, completely nothing, to do with honor and also no place at all in our society. We cannot tolerate them."
As if those hurdles hadn't been set high enough, Merkel's new Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier visited Washington just in time to have to ask painful questions over media reports that CIA planes flew terror suspects in and out of Europe (including Germany) to secret prisons in Eastern Europe, where they allegedly were tortured.
In Washington, things went smoothly. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised to swiftly look into the European CIA affair and said she understood Steinmeier's concerns.
"That's what I would call a first small foreign policy success," Tim Stuchtey, head of the HumboldInstitution on Trans-Atlantic Issues told United Press International in a telephone interview.
Merkel had vowed to repair trans-Atlantic ties after those had cooled off over Schroeder's fierce opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq. On Jan. 11, Merkel will travel to Washington to meet with President George W. Bush.
And then, over the weekend, Merkel learned that a German woman had been kidnapped in Iraq -- on Monday a German TV station aired a photograph showing the woman, Susanne Osthoff, a 43-year-old archaeologist, in the hands of Islamist terrorists. Merkel, in week one as the new leader, has to deal with the first terrorism-related kidnapping of a German citizen.
"We won't be blackmailed," she told lawmakers, appearing bit strained by the eventful week.
