BERLIN (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel travels to the United States for a four-day trip Monday aiming to address Iran’s nuclear program and burnish her global credentials ahead of a crucial regional election in Germany.

Merkel aims to help build consensus over nuclear security at an April 12-13 summit in Washington hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama, then head west, where she is due to visit Hollywood, businesses and leading universities in California.

Government officials say efforts to reach agreement on sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program are likely to feature prominently in Merkel’s talks with world leaders in Washington.

Her ruling coalition has also been debating whether Germany could accept inmates from the U.S. camp in Guantanamo Bay, and media reports suggested Merkel might discuss this with Obama.

Political scientist Hans Vorlaender of the University of Dresden said the United States would serve as a stage for Merkel to play to her home audience in the run-up to the May 9 vote in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany’s most populous state.

The fact that Obama had recently chalked up successes such as a bill on health reform and a landmark deal on disarmament with Russia, could only help Merkel, Vorlaender added.

“She wants to shine as a global politician and some of the glow surrounding Obama’s recent achievements should wash off,” he said. “So this will be a meeting of two power brokers.”

BERLIN, Feb 26 (Reuters) – Germany’s most populous state said on Friday it had bought Swiss bank data in a drive to flush out tax evaders, a clampdown which has strained ties with Switzerland and forced Berne to reform its banking sector.

This marked the first time that German authorities have acknowledged buying details of Swiss bank accounts, although in 2008 they purchased data stolen from a bank in neighbouring Liechtenstein.

A spokeswoman for the state government in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) said it had received the Swiss information on a CD on Friday. However, she declined to say how much it had paid, and did not say from whom it bought the data.

German media have said the data was stolen, and a magazine reported earlier this month that NRW officials were negotiating with a whistleblower in France to buy account details of 1,500 German clients of Swiss banks.

Earlier this year the German federal government gave state authorities the go-ahead to buy the information, even if it was obtained illegally, saying it would do “everything it can to stop tax evasion”.

Germany’s willingness to pay for stolen bank data has shaken Switzerland’s large private banking industry. Germans hold an estimated 200 billion euros in undeclared funds in Switzerland.

Earlier, the DSTG financial authorities’ trade union said half a billion euros in lost tax revenues could be saved in Germany thanks to a jump in tax evaders coming clean about their Swiss bank holdings.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s finance ministry has sketched out a plan in which countries using the euro currency will provide aid worth between 20 billion and 25 billion euros ($27-$33.7 billion) for Greece, a magazine reported on Saturday.

Citing “initial considerations” by the ministry, German weekly Der Spiegel said the share of financial aid for Greece would be calculated according to the proportion of capital each country holds in the European Central Bank.

A spokesman for the German finance ministry said he would not comment on the report, which stated that the financial assistance should take the form of loans and guarantees.

The report said all euro countries would shoulder the burden and that Germany’s share in the package would amount to 4-5 billion euros, and be handled by state-owned bank KfW.

According to the German planning, the aid should be tied to strict conditions, the magazine said, adding that loan tranches should only be paid out once these are met.

Spokesmen for both the Greek finance ministry and the European Commission declined to comment on the report.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has so far resolutely deflected appeals to promise Greece aid despite fears that failure to help Athens could threaten the euro.

BERLIN, Feb 20 (Reuters) – Germany’s finance ministry has sketched out a plan in which countries using the euro currency will provide aid worth between 20 billion and 25 billion euros ($27-$33.7 billion) for Greece, a magazine reported on Saturday.

Citing “initial considerations” by the ministry, German weekly Der Spiegel said the share of financial aid for Greece would be calculated according to the proportion of capital each country holds in the European Central Bank.

A spokesman for the German finance ministry said he would not comment on the report, which stated that the financial assistance should take the form of loans and guarantees.

The report said all euro countries would shoulder the burden and that Germany’s share in the package would amount to 4-5 billion euros, and be handled by state-owned bank KfW.

According to the German planning, the aid should be tied to strict conditions, the magazine said, adding that loan tranches should only be paid out once these are met.

Spokesmen for both the Greek finance ministry and the European Commission declined to comment on the report.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has so far resolutely deflected appeals to promise Greece aid despite fears that failure to help Athens could threaten the euro.

BERLIN (Reuters) – A film about the making of one of Nazi Germany’s most notorious anti-Semitic propaganda films was booed on Thursday during a screening at the Berlin Film Festival.

Sections of the audience jeered and hissed at the premiere of “Jud Suess — Film ohne Gewissen” (“Jew Suess — film without conscience”), which chronicles the making of its 1940 namesake “Jud Suess,” a film still largely banned in Germany.

Blending fact with fiction, the two-hour movie casts Austrian actor Tobias Moretti as the Austrian Ferdinand Marian who is trapped by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels (Moritz Bleibtreu) into accepting a film acting role that would haunt him for the remainder of his career.

Ahead of its first screening, critics had accused the film of distorting history with its depiction of how Marian ended up playing the role of the wily Jewish businessman Joseph Suess Oppenheimer in the original movie.

Marian is shown to be highly reluctant to take the role and the film gives him a Jewish wife who ends up in a concentration camp, and includes a scene in which Goebbels effectively forces him into accepting the part.

Neither detail is based on fact, though historians have said Marian was not keen to play Oppenheimer.

Although the original “Suess” was seen by an estimated 20 million people and helped to set the wheels of the Holocaust in motion, German director Oskar Roehler was unapologetic about changing the facts to fit his version of the story.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Should Germany ride to Greece’s rescue if it can’t even provide for its own?

Behind a facade of principled opposition to bailing out debt-stricken Greeks, the question increasingly haunts the corridors of power in Berlin.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has so far resolutely deflected appeals to promise aid despite fears that failure to help Athens could threaten the euro — the stability of which has long been held sacrosanct by Germany’s political elite.

Merkel’s stance has been vindicated by opinion polls showing that a vast majority of the public oppose a bailout. The Greek crisis could become an issue when her center-right coalition faces a key regional election in Germany’s biggest state in May.

Of almost 31,000 votes cast in an online survey by mass-selling German daily Bild, 82 percent of respondents said the European Union should not rescue Greece.

“The proud, cheating, profligate Greeks” ought to be “thrown out of the euro on their ear” because of their finances, the influential newspaper said in a recent editorial.

In public, Germany argues that leniency would take pressure off Athens and other euro zone debtors to cut their deficits. Behind the scenes, lawmakers acknowledge that Berlin has prepared measures if a rescue becomes inevitable.

PARIS/BERLIN, Feb 4 (Reuters) – France and Germany called for urgent solutions to a funding crisis over Europe’s biggest military project, the A400M troop plane, but talks on Thursday between Airbus <EAD.PA> and NATO nations failed to agree a quick bailout.

Technical problems have pushed the 20 billion euro ($27.75 billion) project four years behind schedule and 11.2 billion euros over budget, threatening up to 10,000 jobs and sparking testy exchanges between the leading buyer Germany and Airbus.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke out following a summit in Paris, but stopped short of a formal declaration as gaps remained among negotiators at seven-nation talks in Berlin.

“Everything must be done to reach a solution. It is a decisive project which must be resolved very quickly,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy said at a joint news conference after the Franco-German summit.

“With regards to the A400M project, I think that the negotiations should be continued, and we agreed that this is a project of strategic significance, and that everything should be done to find a solution,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.

The A400M is designed to put soldiers and heavy equipment in rugged combat zones like Afghanistan, and some backers see it as a prop to Europe’s efforts to forge its own defence identity.

Other buyers of the plane are Britain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain and Turkey.

BERLIN, Feb 4 (Reuters) – Airbus resumed talks with European government buyers on Thursday in a frantic bid to prevent a massive cost overrun from killing off the multinational A400M military transport plane.

The 20 billion-euro project is four years late and 11.2 billion euros over budget, threatening up to 10,000 jobs.

EADS <EAD.PA> unit Airbus is appealing to a group of seven NATO nations for billions of euros in extra financial support to commit to full production of the plane, which made a maiden flight in December.

Junior defence ministers and arms procurement officials met EADS executives at the defence ministry on Thursday.

Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg and Turkey ordered 180 of the troop planes in 2003 to support increasingly global operations.

The meeting is part of a trio of talks across Europe that could determine the outcome of Europe’s largest defence project.

French and German leaders could discuss the issue at a bilateral summit in Paris on Thursday, but a French official said no joint statement had been prepared. [ID:nLDE6122JM]

BERLIN (Reuters) – Iran’s nuclear program, China’s future role in global affairs and Afghanistan are likely to be major themes at this week’s Munich Security Conference, the first at which Beijing will formally participate.

China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi is due to give the opening speech Friday of the three-day conference, where he will join top European and U.S. diplomats seeking answers to disputes in the Middle East and central Asia.

The leading forum on security policy, which lacks some of the heads of government seen in recent years, coincides with fresh Western efforts to draw up new sanctions against Iran at the United Nations, despite misgivings from China and Russia.

Werner Weidenfeld, a political scientist at the University of Munich, said China’s appearance meant the spotlight was bound to fall on the “basic architecture of global politics.”

“It won’t be limited so much to the classic military themes which tended to dominate the conference before,” he said, adding that natural resources and energy would be a focal point.

German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who also attends, said last month the conference would look at conflicts over resources, dealing with pariah states, climate change and control of both conventional and nuclear arms.

Many of these issues have sparked testy exchanges between Western nations and China in recent years, and analysts believe they could do so at the 46th annual conference in Munich, an event often referred to as the “Davos of security policy.”

BERLIN (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday peace talks with Israel could be restarted if the Israeli government was prepared to put a stop to settlement building for “a certain period.”

Abbas has insisted that settlement expansion be halted in the West Bank before negotiations stalled since 2008 may resume.

He had in the past rejected a limited, 10-month construction freeze ordered by Israel in November as insufficient.

“If Israel is prepared to stop settlement building for a certain period…talks could be restarted,” Abbas said, speaking through an interpreter at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.

He did not expand on how long the period would be, though in an interview with Monday’s edition of British newspaper The Guardian, Abbas offered to begin direct talks with Israel in exchange for a complete three-month settlement freeze.

Abbas said Israel would need to accept its June 1967 borders as the basis for any land swaps.

“These are not preconditions, they are requirements in the road map. If they are not prepared to do that, it means they don’t want a political solution,” he told the newspaper.