Chirac and Merkel inspected troops from a joint French and German army unit before, in a break with tradition, the chancellor made a speech in his honor outside the chancellery.

Thanking him for the "long years of cooperation between our two countries," Merkel said 74-year-old Chirac "had constantly been aware that Franco-German cooperation always needed dynamism."

Chirac, she recalled, had been the first foreign head of state to give a speech to the unified German parliament in the restored Reichstag building in 2000.