Angela Merkel German Chancellor

Profile: Angela Merkel

Mrs Merkel could forge closer ties with Washington
Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Angela Merkel has become Germany's first woman chancellor, despite only scraping a victory in the 18 September election.
Her campaign team had worked hard to banish the "dowdy" image which was said to have made her less charismatic than her rival Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
She spruced up her appearance, wearing bright colours and sporting a new hairstyle, while the Rolling Stones hit "Angie" was played at her rallies.
But Mr Schroeder's skilful campaigning eroded her early poll lead.
As a Protestant east German woman Angela Merkel, 51, broke the leadership mould in the CDU, traditionally dominated by Catholic west German men.
She wants fundamental reforms to pull Germany's economy out of the doldrums - especially reducing staff costs and red tape for employers and raising sales tax.
Observers say she will need all her reputed toughness to push them through while holding a potentially fractious "grand coalition" with the Social Democrats together.
Break with Kohl
She first came to prominence five years ago during a CDU party slush fund scandal.
KEY DATES

1954: Born Hamburg
1978: Earned physics doctorate
1990: Joined CDU
1994: Takes environment job
2000: Becomes CDU leaderShe had strongly denied allegations that bribes were paid for the supply of tanks to Saudi Arabia, describing them as "totally absurd".
But as the crisis deepened and the full scale of former chancellor Helmut Kohl's role in it became apparent, she was the first former Kohl ally to publicly break with the man who brought her into the cabinet.
The move paid dividends and she was chosen to lead the party in April 2000.
Yet she was not popular enough to be selected as the party's candidate for chancellor in 2002, and was beaten by Edmund Stoiber, leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).
The Merkel-Stoiber relationship is said to be still difficult - and was not helped by Mr Stoiber's controversial remarks about east Germans during the campaign.
German Thatcher?
Some sections of the press have labelled her as Germany's Margaret Thatcher.
But according to Ulrich Klinkert, her deputy when she headed the environment ministry in the mid-1990s, comparisons with the "Iron Lady" are mistaken.
"She is a little bit Margaret Thatcher and a little bit Tony Blair," he says.
She castigated Mr Schroeder on the economy, pointing to Germany's record post-war unemployment rate.
The CDU wants to ease the rules for dismissing workers and limit sector-wide wage deals - but Mrs Merkel had to make compromises on this to secure the coalition deal.
Role model
She has played down the gender issue and brushed off media gibes about her plain appearance.
Some CDU members see her as something of a role model.
Katerina Reiche once said Mrs Merkel stood for family values, but not as the party has known it before.
"In former times, being married was important - now we talk of families being important, but not necessarily the marriage as an institution."
Science background
Born in Hamburg, Angela Merkel was only a couple of months old when her father, a Lutheran pastor, was given a parish in a small town in East Germany.
She grew up in a rural area outside Berlin in the communist east, and showed a great talent for maths, science and languages.
She earned a doctorate in physics but later worked as a chemist at a scientific academy in East Berlin.
In 1989 she became involved in the burgeoning democracy movement, and, after the Berlin Wall came down, she got a job as government spokeswoman following the first democratic elections.
She joined the CDU two months before the reunification of Germany and within three months she was in the Kohl cabinet as minister for women and youth.
In her political career to date she has outlasted four political bosses, in the east and west, and is the only prominent Ossi (easterner) to have survived in the CDU leadership.
She is married to a chemistry professor from Berlin, Joachim Sauer. The couple do not have any children.