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Joe Biden, then US Vice President, Chancellor Angela Merkel 2013 in Berlin
Photo: JOHANNES EISELE / AFP
The Chancellor sent the new US President congratulations on the election victory in November, and now Angela Merkel and Joe Biden have formally established their contact.
In her first telephone conversation with Biden after he was sworn in, the Chancellor assured the new US President that she would cooperate on international challenges.
The Chancellor and the US President agreed that more international efforts were necessary to cope with the corona pandemic, said government spokesman Steffen Seibert.
Other topics of the discussion were foreign policy issues, especially Afghanistan and Iran, as well as trade and climate policy.
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Merkel had welcomed the US return to the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement.
The Chancellor had also invited Biden to visit Germany as soon as the pandemic situation allowed, Seibert said.
Biden first contacted Johnson and Macron, then Merkel
Biden was sworn in on Wednesday.
On Friday, he first spoke to Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Mexican colleague Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
On the other side of the Atlantic, he first contacted British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Saturday, and on Sunday he phoned French President Emmanuel Macron.
When asked on Monday whether it was a bad sign for Germany that Biden had first phoned London and Paris, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said: "You can see it that way, you don't have to see it that way." He was "very confident that we are facing great opportunities and it is up to us what we make of them, «says Maas.
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fek / dpa / AFP / Reuters