EU to engage more with China, to convene special summit: Merkel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday said the European Union will engage more with China as well as Africa going ahead and asserted that Europe needs to speak in a clearer and stronger voice.

She also urged the world to help countries fighting terror in their own lands.

"We all woke up with a start seeing the tensions between the US and Iran. We stand up for keeping the Iran Nuclear Deal, even if it is imperfect," she said.

Europe needs to speak with a stronger and clearer voice, she said and pledged to listen more to what Africans countries want when Germany takes up the presidency of the EU.

"We should finally understand that cooperation with Africa cannot be handing out charity but that this something that will be benefit us too, she said.

She also pledged to cooperate more with China and will convene a special summit to that end.

We will stand up for multilateralism, she said. The most effective way of creating global prosperity is the multilateral way. It won't be good for the world to become bipolar again, Chancellor Merkel said.

She said, earlier EU had to deal with countries who wanted to come in, but now for the first time it is dealing with a member going out and it has to be respected. She also said UK was anyway never a very willing member.