Germany's foreign minister said Tuesday that he was hopeful a meeting with his Chinese counterpart would help to improve relations with Beijing, strained after Chancellor Angela Merkel hosted the Dalai Lama in Berlin. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi were to meet on the sidelines of a meeting about Iran with their U.S., British, French and Russian colleagues. «I'm quite hopeful that we have clarified things so that we can return to a normalization of relations,» Steinmeier said in a morning interview on ARD television.
