But at home in Germany, Merkel has been surprisingly timid on many key issues – especially when they involve her conservative Christian Democrats. Her tendency to avoid clear positions has driven her coalition partners mad. Merkel might be a lion when she’s on foreign stages but she tends to be a lamb at home. One of her favourite sayings is: “If you try to beat your head into a wall, the wall will usually win.”

Merkel’s latest evasive action centres on another woman in her party, Erika Steinbach. Ostensibly, it’s a relatively minor issue about a seat on the board of a new museum about the plight of German World War Two refugees. But in reality it is an issue that reverberates deeply in Merkel’s conservative party as well as across Germany’s eastern border in Poland. 

The League of Expellees, a powerful force in Merkel’s party, wants their leader Steinbach, who is a conservative member of parliament, on the museum’s board. Merkel’s past and present coalition partners have vetoed Steinbach (pictured above with Merkel) because of Poland’s objections to the woman with controversial views in the past on the German-Poland border and Poland’s membership in the European Union.    

So what does Merkel do?  She sits it all out and puts off any decision. That was her strategy when the issue came up earlier and this is now the sequel to the earlier round of the unfinished business.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a leader in the opposition Social Democrats who was Merkel’s foreign minister for the last four years, understands well her reluctance to take a stance on controversial issues at home. In a German TV interview on Thursday he put the finger in the wound and said: “Mrs. Merkel has to make up her mind.”

The situation is turning into a farce. Both Merkel and the League say it is the other side that has to make a decision.

There have been a number of other occasions where Merkel’s voice went oddly silent. She calls on other countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions but ducks questions about introducing a speed limit on Germany’s motorways that could cut emissions by 5-10 percent overnight. She first agreed to introduce a minimum wage in Germany with her Social Democrat coalition partners but did a quick U-turn when her party refused to go along.

 A year ago as the financial crisis was engulfing Europe and the world, Merkel faced withering criticism for her overly cautious response initially. Der Spiegel called her “Angela Mutlos” (Angela Faint-hearted) and acussed her of ”dangerous dithering”. It wrote: “Merkel has always been quiet, reticent, cautious. Merkel has failed to lead her country through a time of uncertainty.” At the time she also first refused to consider cutting taxes to stimulate growth but reversed course under pressure from powerful barons in her party with a series of small steps and was suddenly in favour of tax cuts a few weeks later.

Last month, in coalition talks for a new centre-right government, Merkel kept going out the back door to avoid journalists each evening and remained silent when a controversy erupted over her government’s short-lived proposal to create a shadow budget to borrow 50 billion euros. This week Der Spiegel published a story on her powerful Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who said that Merkel’s weakness is she likes to surround herself with yes men.

So is Merkel really the world’s most powerful woman?

By Patrick Worsnip

It’s not uncommon for journalists at some point in their careers to cross the barricades and become the people who dish out the news as spokespersons for an organization or firm, rather than being on the receiving end. It requires a different set of skills that can make the transition tough, and a stern test confronts former Reuters correspondent Martin Nesirky, who has just been appointed spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. After a high-flying career at Reuters that saw him fill senior editorial positions in London, Berlin, Moscow and Seoul, Nesirky has had some time to acclimatize to his new role by working for more than three years as spokesman for the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), based in Vienna. But the move to New York brings much more formidable challenges.

Like any U.N. spokesperson, Nesirky, a Briton, will have to take into account the concerns of the 192 nations that belong to the world body. That’s 192 different governments that can get upset by something he might say. But his chief problem may be his boss Ban, whose public image, to put it mildly, could take a little burnishing. Aside from his awkward use of English, which has television producers tearing their hair, Ban has had a rough ride from hostile media that have accused him of failing to use his position to end the world’s conflicts and right its wrongs. (Defenders say he is more effective than he appears, works tirelessly behind closed doors, and has made at least some progress on such intractable issues as climate change, global poverty and the crisis in Darfur.)

Then there is the sprawling and ill-defined nature of the U.N. press and public relations operation, with different officials and factions competing for the secretary-general’s attention and waiting to pounce on any mis-step by one of the others. The outgoing spokeswoman, Michele Montas of Haiti, stuck to the job for less than three years. In trying to stay close to the South Korean secretary-general, Nesirky could benefit from his knowledge of the Korean language from his time in Seoul. He is also married to a South Korean. But these advantages too could be a double-edged sword. U.N. diplomats have long complained that Ban is happiest in a Korean comfort zone and relies too much on a compatriot who serves as his deputy chief-of-staff, Kim Won-soo.

As a white male from a Western permanent member of the Security Council, Nesirky could also face suspicion from diversity lobbies and from the developing world, which already sees Ban as too much in thrall to the United States. (Ban’s U.S. critics make the opposite accusation.)

In the world of spokespeople, the U.N. post may look from the outside like a dream job. But insiders were not so envious. Nesirky joins the world body as Ban is getting ready to try to persuade the great powers who decide these things that he has done well enough in his first five-year term of office, which ends in December 2011, that he deserves a second one. Most analysts give him a good chance, saying he has done nothing to offend key players in Washington and Beijing. But if they are wrong, Nesirky’s job could turn out to be one of his shorter assignments.

The fact that European Union leaders have not yet reached a consensus on who should become president of the 27-nation bloc, with time running out before a summit on who should  be given the post, has compounded my belief that they should scrap the idea all together.

During the horse-trading of the past few weeks I have found myself asking the question: why do we need an EU president, particularly since the bloc has at least one, if not two, capable presidents already.

Having covered the EU in some depth for the past six years and travelled with EU delegations to many events, notably with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, I have found the system seems to work well for the most part. 

The post of EU president was created to give Brussels more clout and respect in world affairs. The person was supposed to be instantly recognisable and charismatic to boost dwindling public confidence which hit rock bottom when French and Dutch voters rejected the EU’s draft constitution in 2005.

A ‘No’ vote in Ireland in 2008 on the Lisbon reform treaty that replaced the constitution also damaged the EU’s international standing. 

A U-turn by Irish voters in October showed there is less of a need for a superstar to lead Europe because, as an entity — driven by a strong euro currency — the EU has, I believe, emerged from the economic crisis in good shape from a public relations perspective.
Belgium’s little-known Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy has emerged as the latest frontrunner, or compromise candidate.  A straw poll of 10 people around the EU district in Brussels showed three knew he was Belgium’s leader, two said he was a Belgian politician, and five were
completely unaware of him. 

So, if at least half of this mix of EU officials, lobbyists and lawyers haven’t a clue who he is, what hope is there for the man or woman in Dublin, Warsaw or Prague ?

The previous favourite and long-time front-runner was former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The fact that he is on first-name terms with the world’s leaders and glitterati were his selling points. 

I have seen U.S. President Barack Obama change direction when out strolling during a G8 meeting to speak to his “friend Jose”.  Barroso is on first-name terms with just about all the world’s leaders after five years as Commission president.

If the EU wants a bit of showbiz, while in New York at the U.N. General Assembly, the former Portuguese Prime Minister was invited backstage by singer Bono at a sell-out concert by the Irish rock band U2. 

After the concert, Barroso went to an after-show party with the cream of stage, screen, music and fashion hosted by Rupert Murdoch for charity. He was seen holding the full attention of the Eurosceptical media mogul.

Under the current system, each member state holds the EU presidency for six months in turn. Giving a president a 2-1/2 year role is intended to give unrivalled continuity and make the EU more effective.

After working with more than 10 presidencies, I have found that some countries have strong presidencies and others do not — the problem is more with the country at the helm than with the system. 

The current Swedish presidency has been widely praised as pro-active, efficient, conciliatory, transparent and inclusive of all member states, taking into account all countries’ views and not just those of Paris, Berlin and London.

If Stockholm and Barroso are seen to work smoothly together, do we need to further complicate matters and add yet another European president ?

Photos: Top (clockwise from left): Leading contenders for EU President - Belgian PM Herman Van Rompuy, former British PM Tony Blair, Luxembourg PM Jean Claude Juncker, former Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, former Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Dutch PM Jan Peter Balkenende

Middle: Former British PM Tony Blair in the fast lane

Bottom: U2 singer and leading global aid campaigner Bono with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso in Brussels

The depth or angle of U.S. President Barack Obama's bow -- and handshake -- with Japan's Emperor Akihito has become a heated on-line topic, with sides arching into political camps on whether the greeting went too far -- literally -- or was appropriate based on customs and culture.

I don't pretend to be an expert on bowing in Japan, but a few basic rules of thumb, or backbone, are: the more important a person you are greeting, the deeper and longer you bow, with hands generally at one's sides; and multiple purposes can be served by this act including greeting as well as displays of respect, recognition, apology or gratitude.

While no one called the president's bow an expression of apology or thanks, a number of blogs examined his and other U.S. leaders' historical bent in stooping to diplomatically conquer, with a few labelling the U.S. commander-in-chief "O-Bow-Ma".

The Fox network and the Los Angeles Times blog offered details of Obama's and other official U.S. greetings with the imperial family, including a photo of Vice President Dick Cheney shaking Akihito's hand, and one posted a comment that bowing and handshaking should not be done simultaneously.

A blog from ABC news Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper, citing an academic friend, says both sides have it wrong, as the bow was not over -- or under -- the top in precedence, although it did not display the cultural understanding intended, rather weakness in Japanese terms.

The Huffington Post, meanwhile, seeming to anticipate a "bow row" ahead, noted criticism Obama had already received for a greeting of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah in April, with Republican Senators blasting him and the White House calling the president "bent over" to shake hands but not in a bow.

Rounding out coverage, Japan's Sankei Shimbun/MSN on-line carried news of the Fox report that Obama's bow was too low for a head of state as well as the comparison to Cheney's 2007 Akihito handshake, adding a slate of imperial photos with slightly different angles and framing.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Jim Young

Two years ago Sigmar Gabriel came into the Reuters office in Berlin for an interview about climate change, the environment, renewable energy policies and the state of his Social Democrats.

The burly minister, who was elected leader of Germany’s struggling centre-left SPD party on Friday, had clearly lost weight on his summer holiday that had just ended so, while my colleagues were still streaming into the conference room, I asked: “You’ve lost some weight, haven’t you?”

Gabriel smiled briefly. Colleagues later told me they were horrified that I had asked him about his weight. It was merely an attempt to break the ice. There was, after all, another German political leader a few years ago who was once even heavier and lost more than 50 kg with an intensive jogging and diet programme that began one summer: Joschka Fischer of the Greens.

“Yeah, I did,” Gabriel said. “I got some exercise on my holiday. But I won’t be able to keep it off if people keep putting things like this in front of me like you’ve done here,” he added with a laugh as he munched on some cookies.

Gabriel soon regained the few kilos he had lost – so did so did Fischer.

Gabriel, who even then was clearly one of the most ambitious politicians of his generation, has a bigger worry right now.

How do you save Germany’s oldest party? The SPD won just 23 percent of the vote in the September election and left government after an 11-year run. That was down 11 points from four years ago and a staggering 18 points off the 41 percent they won when winning the chancellery in 1998. About 10 million voters who backed the SPD in 1998 have abandoned the party.

“We’ve lost half of our voters since 1998,” Gabriel, 50, told the party congress in a two-hour speech. “We’ve lost them in all directions: some don’t vote any more, some went to the conservatives, some to the Free Democrats, some to the Left party and some to the Greens. What’s clear is that a party that loses its support like that has lost its profile.”

So why did Gabriel take on this job? There wasn’t a long list of candidates which, considering the way the party has treated its leaders the past two decades, is understandable. The SPD leadership job has turned into an ejection seat. The party had just three different chairmen between 1950 and 1990 but there have been 11 different leaders since 1990 and an incredible six since 2004. Many have left involuntarily. Gabriel ran unopposed.

“That’s not healthy for our party,” said Gabriel when asked about the rapid changes in leadership. “One delegate came up to me and said he had a Christmas wish: that I’d be the party chairman for at least the next two years. I told him I also had a Christmas wish: that in a year he would have the same Christmas wish.”

Gabriel, once a school teacher whose mother was a nurse, was in the second tier of his party’s leadership before the September election debacle and an environment minister who courted controversy with environmental groups at times. He was ambitious and long had his eye on the job of one day becoming parliamentary floor leader, a top-tier job in the SPD hierarchy. Outside Germany, he was probably best known for adopting Knut, the polar bear born in Berlin’s Zoo.

Gabriel’s brusque humour and prickly nature had rubbed many in the SPD the wrong way. We’ve heard others in the SPD leadership -– in similar off-the-record comments in meetings in the Reuters office -– tell us they believed there was no way Gabriel would get the top job.

Now, in a single leap, he’s skipped the intermediate step and clinched the party’s top job. A television journalist told him: “Six months ago I never would have dreamt you’d be the SPD chairman now.”

“Neither did I,” said Gabriel. “Neither did I.”

They may be on first-name terms, but Barack's discussions with Yukio during his 24-hour stay in Tokyo have left unresolved a feud over a U.S. military base and deeper questions about the future.

They agreed to review the five decade-old U.S.-Japan alliance as both countries adapt to China's rising regional and global clout, and they agreed to resolve as soon as possible a dispute over the U.S. Marines Futenma airbase on Japan's southern island of Okinawa.

But President Obama and Prime Minister Hatoyama remain at odds over how to resolve the feud over Futenma - located in the middle of a city whose residents are sick of the noise and worried about the danger of accidents. 

Obama made clear he wants Tokyo to implement a 2006 deal under which Futenma would be closed and replaced with a facility on a less crowded part of the island. The agreement was part of a broader realignment of the 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan, including a shift of up to 8,000 Marines to the U.S. territory of Guam.

But Hatoyama said that comments during the August campaign that vaulted his party  to power had raised the hopes of Okinawa residents who want the base off the island.

High-level talks could begin as early as next week, reviving the headache the leaders played down at their summit before an APEC meeting in Singapore.

They can't let the base row drag on. The victory of an anti-base candidate in a local mayoral election in Okinawa in January would make it even harder to agree to implement the deal, even with some
changes.

Bowing to U.S. demands could cause a rift with two small coalition partners, upset some in Hatoyama's own party and alienate some voters ahead of an important upper house election in mid-2010.

But the bigger issue is the wider review of the alliance -- a process one newspaper compared to being in "the same bed with different dreams". Hatoyama and Obama want to complete the review before Japan hosts an Asia-Pacific summit a year from now.

Many experts say the alliance needs to be reframed to adjust to changing regional and global dynamics centred on China's rise. But it remains to be seen whether the two sides will approach the process the same way.

Hatoyama wants to broaden the alliance to include non-traditional security areas, but what future role he sees for the U.S. bases in Japan is not clear.

Hatoyama's party wants to steer a more independent diplomatic course but the paradox of Tokyo living in a nuclear neighbourhood but dependent on the U.S. nuclear umbrella means analysts see the relationship as inherently unequal.

Photo credits: REUTERS/Kim Kyung Hoon and REUTERS/Jason Reed

Honduras seems trapped in the past. Radio stations play aging hits from Mexican crooner Jose Jose and cumbia dance numbers from the mid-’80s. Women’s fashions are out-of-date and guards nestling big rifles guard beauty salons and pharmacies as they have for decades.

Politics are also mired in the past in this deeply conservative country of 7 million people. While elsewhere in Latin America a new generation of leftists has taken power, putting business leaders on the defensive to some extent and to varying degrees, Honduras’ business elite flexed its muscles when a leftist prsident hinted he wanted to extend presidential term limits.

For four months Honduras has been led by a de facto leader, Roberto Micheletti, who took over after the army, Supreme Court and Congress together pulled a coup on elected President Manuel Zelaya, who was flown out of the country. Zelaya later sneaked back in to take asylum in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. Repeated attempts at a negotiated settlement between the two have dissolved into bickering.

Micheletti has shown staying power — even after he was isolated on the global stage.  That’s because he is backed by a secretive and relatively small group of business leaders that have long wielded political power in this Central American country, which is heavily dependent on foreign aid and on its biggest trade partner, the United States. The Honduran Documentation Center think tank has documented the control that a group of intermarried families has on the country’s banks, industries such as the maquiladora factories that make clothes to export to the U.S., coffee and banana and cattle production, and power generation. The book “The Powers that Be and the Political System,” by a group of researchers, argues that the business class has increased its influence over politics since Honduras returned to democracy 30 years after two decades of off-and-on military regimes. The book says each business group owns a media outlet that helps it maintain and transfer power from the “dinosaur” leaders to the next generations of “babysaurs.”

No wonder Micheletti looks a little smug as he thumbs his nose at the international community, declaring a “unity and reconciliation” government without Zelaya’s participation after they both signed a pact to name a joint cabinet. Zelaya is backed by organizations that say they want profound social change in Honduras but apparently not badly enough to invite further repression from the military and the police and sow chaos Bolivian style with huge marches and road blocks all over the country.

A pro-Zelaya television station and radio station provide blanket coverage of the so-called resistance movement — after being briefly silenced by the Micheletti government — but most TV channels assemble morning talk shows with experts and lawmakers who support Micheletti. It’s not really a surprise. Honduras has never thrown itself in with the region’s leftist movments. All three countries bordering on Honduras — Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador — had major leftist insurgencies that profoundly altered the political landscapes in those countries whether or not they eventually came to power. Honduras, meanwhile, became a base for the U.S. counter-insurgency, or Contra movement, against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

Photo captions and credits:

Micheletti speaks with Craig Kelly, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs in Tegucigalpa 11/11/2009. REUTERS/Henry Romero

A supporter of Zelaya shouts at a rally outside Congress in Tegucigalpa 12/11/2009. REUTERS/Henry Romero

Zelaya walks inside the Brazilian Embassy 6/11/2009. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

No, says the U.S. federal government, but officials finally have enough data to give a good picture of the pandemic and it isn’t pretty. The CDC estimates that 22 million Americans caught swine flu in the first six months of the pandemic and 3,900 people died.

This includes 540 children.

So why the big jump in numbers? In a country of 300 million people, it takes some time to do a count. The US doesn’t have an organized public health system and states and cities lack enough staff to crunch the numbers in real-time. So the CDC takes a representative, detailed sampling from 10 states and then extrapolates this to the total US population. The latest figures are the first to give a good estimate of how extensive the pandemic is so far.

The CDC is pushing vaccines but at the same time, supply is spotty and people are often suspicious of them. Americans are not alone in this mistrust, by the way - check here for an unpdate on what is happening in Europe.  And here is one creative way to help prevent the spread…

Swine flu is turning out to be a sales bonanza for drug companies - just don't call it a windfall, says GlaxoSmithKline.

As one of the world's top suppliers of both vaccines and antiviral medicine, CEO Andrew Witty resents the implication that billions of dollars of business simply fell into his company's lap when the World Health Organisation declared H1N1 a pandemic in June.

"For me the word windfall means you're walking down the street and something fell out of the sky," he told the Reuters Health Summit. "We've spent the best part of 15 years investing for this situation and our ability to manufacture and supply potentially 500 million or so doses (of vaccine) is all because of these investments."

- Phelim Kine is an Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch. The opinions expressed are her own. -

When 15-year-old Wang Xiaomei made the long trip from Gansu province to Beijing last year, she hoped to find justice for her family. Instead, she met with abuse.

First, Wang was abducted by plainclothes Gansu officials, who imprisoned her incommunicado for two months in a “black jail”—an illegal detention facility.

Two days before her September 13, 2008 release, Wang’s captors beat her so badly they knocked out one of her teeth. Wang’s victimizers have never been brought to justice.

Worse still, Wang’s experience—which stands in stark contrast to the Chinese government’s claims of fealty to the rule of law—is not unique. A new Human Rights Watch report released today, “An Alleyway in Hell: China’s Abusive ‘Black Jails',” exposes the routine and severe human rights abuses perpetrated against detainees in these secret facilities.

Our research shows that Wang is just one of estimated thousands of people abducted off the streets of Chinese cities and held incommunicado for weeks or months. Inside these unlawful, secret detention facilities detainees are beaten, sexually abused, deprived of food, sleep and medical care, and subject to theft, extortion and intimidation at the hands of their guards.

And, as Wang’s case shows, children aren’t spared the dangers and indignities of black jail detention. These facilities exist outside of China’s official prison system, and are often located in state-owned hotels, nursing homes and psychiatric hospitals.

The former black jail detainees we interviewed were petitioners--people from mainly rural areas who come to Beijing and other cities in search of legal redress for violations including illegal land seizures and police torture. The petitioning system, which exists in parallel to formal judicial structures, is entirely legal, and explicitly permits people to take their grievances to the highest levels of government.

So why are petitioners being treated this way? Black jails emerged in 2003 after the Chinese government abolished laws permitting the arbitrary detention of any “undesirables.” But that progress was undercut by the introduction at the local level of guidelines that limit local officials’ prospects for promotions or raises if petitioners from their areas carried on their efforts to find justice in larger cities.

What might have been intended as an incentive to make local officials deal with local grievances became an incentive for those officials to keep petitioners off the streets and invest considerable resources in achieving that goal. Plainclothes thugs commonly known as retrievers, or jiefang renyuan, locate and abduct petitioners in Beijing and other cities for bounties as high as $250 per person. Operators of black jail facilities reap daily cash payments from local governments of up to $29 per detainee, helping to perpetuate black jail abuses.

Rather than crack down on these facilities, the central Chinese government denies that they even exist. In an April 2009 Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs press conference, a MOFA official responded to a foreign correspondent’s query about black jails by insisting, “Things like this do not exist in China.”

In June 2009, the Chinese government asserted in the Outcome Report of the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission’s Universal Periodic Review of China’s human rights record that, “There are no black jails in the country.”

Such denials make a mockery of the commitment in the first-ever National Human Rights Action Plan that, “The Chinese government unswervingly pushes forward the cause of human rights in China.” The Chinese government’s credibility would be considerably enhanced by acknowledging that black jails do indeed exist, shutting them down, liberating detainees, and bringing the perpetrators to justice.

External actors also have a role to play. Many governments and international organizations fund Chinese legal reform projects, and they too should demand that the Chinese government put an end to these abuses and that their victims be fairly compensated.

No less a civil rights and legal aid luminary than U.S. President Barack Obama, who will make his first trip as President to China on November 16-18, has a golden opportunity to raise the cases of black jail detainees and explain that an independent judicial system in China is of significant consequence to U.S.-China relations.

He should also repeat to his Chinese hosts–and the Chinese people—his September 2009 message to the United Nations General Assembly: “True leadership will not be measured by the ability to muzzle dissent, or to intimidate and harass political opponents at home.”