Ms Merkel remains a strong favourite to defeat the SPD candidate (and foreign minister), Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in September.
Yet for Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany's foreign minister, these difficulties are no reason to pull the troops out of Afghanistan.
Chancellor Merkel's success is also due in part to the weakness of her main challenger, the SPD candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
El flamante ministro del Exterior de Alemania, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, dijo durante una visita a Washington esta semana que el gobierno de EE.
BBC: Mundo | Internacional | CIA "oper�� vuelos" en Alemania
That will mean resolving bitter internal disputes between economic reformers such as the party's candidate, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and the party's powerful left wing.
The Social Democratic foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, will go, but his successor, almost certainly Guido Westerwelle of the Free Democratic Party, has not yet arrived.
And he is said to be untidy and impatient with paperwork, unlike the immaculate Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a chancellery man who had been in line for the job.
Meanwhile, Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is expected to raise the issue of "secret" prisons in talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington on Tuesday.
To some, one highlight of Avignon was a successful push by Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany's foreign minister, to demand an inquiry into the causes and conduct of the war.
ECONOMIST: Europe frets about its place in a different world order
While Merkel elsewhere distances herself from the idea of state aid for big, flailing businesses, her election rival, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, lauds the Magna-Opel deal on and supports aid for Arcandor too.
It has run through four party chairmen in the past five years and its candidate for the chancellorship, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, now foreign minister, looks no match for the popular incumbent, the CDU's Angela Merkel.
And both major German political parties - Mrs Merkel's Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats led by Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier - make clear there is no turning back from a close embrace of Russia.
"From our point of view, the boycott of the Palestinians was always an injustice and we have to find a solution to overcome these problems, " Mr Abbas said on Thursday, after meeting German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
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