Angela Merkel

New Delhi, Oct. 24: German chancellor Angela Merkel is arriving in India next week on her first visit, willing to support the nuclear deal with the US and to look at creative new ways to solve the illegal immigration problem.

Whether the nuclear deal is dead, comatose or simply on hold, German ambassador to India Bernd Muetzelberg would not say, at a meeting with journalists in the capital yesterday.

Like the rest of the world, he said, Germany was waiting to see how India resolved its political processes before it could cast its vote at the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

Muetzelberg, who was national security adviser to former chancellor Helmut Kohl, clearly relishes the idea of breaking new ground. So when India sought support from the traditionally peacenik Germans for a deal that would give it de facto nuclear power status, Merkel’s SPD party agreed to give the green light.

Muetzelberg confirmed that Merkel’s party was positively inclined towards the deal, though the Opposition was more divided along traditional non-proliferation lines.

Clearly, Merkel’s visit is among the more interesting ones this winter. As the moving force behind the European economic miracle, as it asserts itself inside the European Union on major political issues and seeks to set the world agenda on matters like climate change, Germany wants to position itself early on the India success story.

Bilateral trade has doubled, from 5 billion euros in 2004 to 12 billion in 2007, and continues to grow. Investment is also booming, but the German ambassador admitted that Berlin would like to pursue collaboration in defence technologies and equipment so as to embed the relationship even further.

Illegal immigration from India, however, remains a touchy issue. The villages of Punjab, especially, are regularly emptying themselves in search of the great German dream. According to Muetzelberg, as many as 5,000 people from Punjab are refused visas annually.

The German ambassador pointed out that there were pockets of extreme poverty in India, despite the economic boom and spectacular high rates of growth, that were driving illegal immigrants to Europe, where Germany was a major gateway.

He said Germany was comfortable with educated, professional immigrants and indeed welcomed them. But when it came to people who only wanted to become recipients of the social welfare system without giving anything back, the German taxpayer was bound to rebel, he said.

Muetzelberg pointed out that immigration arrangements similar to those that had been forged with Britain needed to be put into place with Germany, where checks and balances were the norm.

He admitted no one had a silver wand to solve the problem, only that this was an increasingly political issue that directly impacted the lives of millions of Germans.

Especially when unemployment was touching a record 8-9 per cent, some people often felt that “foreigners” were depriving tax-paying Germans their legitimate dues, he said.

to promote a broad-based partnership