Merkel aims to ‘serve people of Germany’ as 4th term looms

The meeting between Mr Obama and the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain was the first of its format since Mr Trump’s election.

However, observers hold Merkel as the defender of Western values, some even calling her the new “leader of the free world”, as Barack Obama prepares to hand over White House to president-elect Trump.

Obama urged the leaders of Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Great Britain to keep on “seeking solutions to common challenges with the incoming US administration, on the basis of the core values that define the United States and Europe as open democracies”, according to a White House statement.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy that no decisions had been made about extending the Ukraine sanctions, but actions to implement the Minsk peace accord were not sufficient.

It is as if that the world will be shaken up with the foreign relation that Trump will have as his policy, said on The Wall Street Journal.

“The two administrations have not agreed on any separate meetings, but we can assume that President Putin and President Obama will cross paths on the sidelines of the forum and will talk”, Peskov said.

The European leaders are expected to warn his successor, Mr Trump, that now is not the moment to weaken sanctions against Russian Federation, which were imposed in 2014 over the conflict in Ukraine, BBC reported. “We accept that – and we’ll wait for the submission”.

He added that the US would “continue to stand united with Germany and our North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies” in Afghanistan, and that on the refugee crisis he had put in place more robust support from Washington and that he was “hoping that continues beyond my administration”.

Obama campaigned furiously for Hillary Clinton throughout the presidential campaign, and repeatedly painted Republican Donald Trump as bigoted and xenophobic. “But she’s tough”, said Obama, in his sixth official visit to Germany, before heading off to Lima for a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders. And no one expects that the executive tutoring will substantially change Trump’s vast differences with Obama, who he called the worst president in USA history.

When Barack Obama came to Berlin in 2008 he was greeted like a rock star.

In a brief statement alongside Dr Merkel, British prime minister Theresa May said all Berlin attendees remained united in their condemnation of the atrocities taking place in Syria.

It was the final meeting of Obama and Merkel as peers on the world stage, and both leaders spoke glowingly of each other’s leadership.