Call for Unity

In an interview, published on Wednesday, with the daily Rheinische Post newspaper, Merkel warned against a division in Europe over the issue. "The only option," Merkel said, "is to present a common front."

The US would like to deploy 10 defensive missiles in Poland and set up a radar tracking station in the Czech Republic. The shield system, the Pentagon has insisted, would serve to shoot down potential warheads launched from countries the US considers hostile such as South Korea or Iran.

But the plans have caused consternation in Russia and prompted discord in both Europe and in Germany.

"Nothing we can do"

Merkel phrased her call for unity in the European context but with an eye toward squabbles between her own conservative party and her Social Democratic coalition partners here in Germany.

The Social Democrats' party leader Kurt Beck has been particularly vocal in criticizing the US plans, suggesting they could trigger an arms race akin to the Cold War. He said Germany should do everything it can to block the system.

But German military experts have pointed out that the proposed missiles are purely defensive in nature -- and too few in number to be directed against a major military power like Russia.

German conservatives have accused Beck of exploiting the issue for political purposes and of endangering the coalition partners' ability to work with one another. Merkel has said NATO should decide the issue.

Members of the German press have questioned how much say Germany or the EU will have in the matter anyway. "We can cooperate like Prague and Warsaw," journalist Eberhard Fehre wrote in an editorial for the daily Westdeutsche Zeitung newspaper, "or we can carp like Kurt Beck or choose airy cliches like Angela Merkel. But we won't change anything.