Germany/G8 summit:Bob Geldof and Bono could be political lifesavers for Chancellor Angela Merkel at this week's G8 summit in the German Baltic resort of Heiligendamm.
Desperately seeking success, the German leader has watched hopes fade in recent days of reaching a deal on climate change with the US.
Rather than end the summit on a note of failure, Dr Merkel is understood to be ready to switch horses to the African aid campaign of the two Irish singer-activists and push other G8 leaders to meet their aid promises to the impoverished continent.
Dr Merkel will meet US president George Bush ahead of this week's summit in a last-minute push to rescue her climate initiative.
Germany has pushed for G8 countries to accept an agreement to allow temperature rises of no more than two degrees Celsius until 2050, requiring a halving of climate-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in that period.
US officials have rejected any talk of binding emission limits and, instead, President Bush made a call last week for talks next year among the world's biggest CO2 emitters.
Berlin was caught off guard. It is not impressed. Officials here see it, at best, as a stalling tactic for the American leader and, at worst, an attempt to start a competing initiative to the Kyoto process outside the UN.
Dr Merkel has warned in unusually strong language that she is not interested in "lazy compromises" or "watered down" climate goals.
"If America doesn't move, other countries will wait and see too," she tells today's Der Spiegel. "I'm not counting on a solution this week, we still have an awful lot to do . . . the important thing is that [ talks] must culminate in a UN process. This is non-negotiable, as far as I am concerned." Confidential minutes of a chancellery meeting on May 30th, quoted by Der Spiegel this morning, warn that "advisers to the American president are travelling through a series of industrialising countries with the goal of intervening against Germany's ambitious G8 agenda".
According to the minutes, Dr Merkel calls for "climate change expectations to be played down significantly in public" while Beata Baumann, Dr Merkel's closest adviser, notes that "the German public expects a success on climate protection at the G8 summit . . . the summit could be seen as failed if no convincing results can be reached on climate protection".
Enter Bono and Bob Geldof. The two Irish activists have used every publicity trick in the book in recent weeks to get Berlin to put pressure on the summit participants to make good on their promises from 2005 to double African aid by $25 billion (€18.6 billion) by 2010.
Almost all countries have fallen behind in their instalments, including Germany. Dr Merkel has promised Geldof that Berlin will meet its aid goal for this year and give an additional €750 million for the next four years. According to the confidential memo, "Geldof promised personally to temper the criticism" of leading German aid campaigners in return.
Representatives for the campaigners said they were not aware of any quid pro quo whereby the Irish campaigners get their money and German leader her summit success story.
"It's certainly interesting," said a spokesperson for Data, the Africa advocacy group founded by Bono.
"The trouble is African aid and climate change go hand in hand. The reason climate change is such a problem for Africa is because they have absolutely no defences against it."
Meanwhile, German police have warned of tougher measures in the coming days to prevent a repeat of Saturday's events when an anti-G8 demonstration turned into a running street battle.