Merkel’s visit to Canada shadowed by eurozone fears August 16, 2012 - 13:27 AMT PanARMENIAN.Net - German leader Angela Merkel held talks with her Canadian counterpart on a first-ever bilateral visit shadowed by eurozone fears and Ottawa's refusal to wade into relief efforts. The delegation was all smiles as Prime Minister Stephen Harper whisked Merkel away to his lakeside retreat for an informal dinner ahead of talks on the debt crisis and efforts to reach an EU-Canada free trade pact. Merkel had arrived with five German business leaders who were to be joined by counterparts from five Canadian firms during a business luncheon Thursday, August 16 with Merkel and Harper. The two leaders "have a close, trusting relationship," a senior Merkel aide said. But they remain split on how to tackle the European debt crisis. While Germany has helped backstop struggling eurozone nations, Canada and the United States are the only G8 members to not contribute to a bailout stash through the International Monetary Fund. Ahead of Merkel's arrival, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said that Canada would not reconsider contributing to the fund to help ailing Greece, Spain and Italy, according to AFP. Partner news  Top stories The bomber set off his explosives outside the gate of the United Nations Development Program base before attackers ran inside. Hamid Karzai accused Washington of mixed messages regarding peace talks with the Taliban, his spokesman said. The deal is estimated at $700mln-$1bln, Vedomosti newspaper reported citing sources in the Russian defense industry. Ahmadinejad will be replaced by Hassan Rowhani as president on August 3 following presidential elections last week.   Partner news |  Latest news Microsoft rumored to look into buying Nokia‘s handset business  The price tag and market position concerns weren’t the only reason the talks fell through, says the sources, without additional details.Megaupload files deleted, Dotcom decries ‘largest data massacre’ "We were never warned about the deletion," Dotcom said, adding that the loss of the files had reduced him to tears.LinkedIn suffers outage due to ‘DNS issue’ "We determined it was a DNS issue, we're continuing to work on it. Thanks for your patience,” the network tweeted."The Sopranos" star James Gandolfini dies at 51 "We're all in shock and feeling immeasurable sadness at the loss of a beloved member of our family," the network said. |
