German Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz on Sunday said he would like talks with France and Britain about sharing their nuclear weapons, but not as a substitute for U.S. nuclear protection of Europe. "Sharing nuclear weapons is an issue that we need to talk about...we have to become stronger together in nuclear deterrence," he said in an interview on Deutschlandfunk radio, a day after agreeing cornerstones of a coalition deal between his conservative party and the Social Democratic SPD party. "We should talk with both countries (France and Britain), always also from the perspective of supplementing the American nuclear shield, which we of course want to see maintained."