Chancellor Angela Merkel has conceded that meaningful agreement may be impossible amid policy disagreements and shifting global leadership roles at the G20 meeting that opens on Friday amid high security in Hamburg.
On Thursday evening police halted an anti-G20 gathering of about 12,000 people under motto “Welcome to Hell”. Officers deployed water cannon and pepper spray after an estimated 1,000 protesters donned masks and threw bottles and fireworks at officers.
As police rushed demonstrators, sparking protests of disproportionate use of force, spontaneous demonstrations sprang up elsewhere.
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As cars and bins were set alight, a police spokesman fled to an ambulance after being attacked while giving an interview. On Twitter, Hamburg police reported multiple arrests and at least seven injured officers.
A second march under the motto “Welcome to Hell”, scheduled to pass the city’s trade fair, the G20 summit venue, was cancelled.
About 20,000 police have been stationed around Germany’s second city to guard the two-day meeting, which authorities say has drawn about 100,000 protesters, including an estimated 8,000 left-wing radicals.
On Friday US president Donald Trump holds his first bilateral meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Before the meeting, Mr Trump signalled a tougher line over Ukraine and said he believed Moscow interfered in last year's election that put him in the White House.
On his second European visit, Mr Trump said his administration was considering some “pretty severe” measures in response to North Korea’s intercontinental missile test and would be seeking the backing of G20 leaders on this.
Trade and climate change
Rising tensions over North Korea have squeezed their way into an already packed summit agenda that includes the future of Syria, increased trade with African countries, and rows over trade and climate change.
Lurking in the background are Beijing's increasingly blatant efforts to woo Berlin and other world capitals in a bid to supplant Washington's global leadership role.
With agreement still elusive on the summit’s main points, Dr Merkel admitted that negotiators had “a lot to do in the next two days”. She held a meeting after Mr Trump arrived in Hamburg to sound him out on a face-saving compromise agreement.
Before their meeting, the chancellor, anxious to avoid a lame-duck deal before federal elections in September, warned: “I am not an arbitrator, I am here to make contributions to solving problems.”
Earlier in the day in Warsaw, Mr Trump sent conciliatory signals before his first G20 meeting, insisting – after months of strategic ambiguity – that his administration would honour Nato's mutual defence clause.
Tragedy and destruction
He also insisted that US borders would remain closed "to terrorist and extremists of any kind" and likened the Islamist threat to the twin dictatorships – Nazi and communist – that brought tragedy and destruction to Poland in the last century.
“Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilisation in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?” he asked to cheers from an enthusiastic crowd in Warsaw, bused in for the rally.
The G20 has met in its current format since 2008, but gathering the leaders of the world’s largest economies to Hamburg’s city centre trade fair has been criticised as a risky security move. At an estimated cost of at least €130 million for two days, tight security measures culminated on Thursday with families fleeing the city and shop-owners barricading their premises.
