Gorbachev and Kohl mark key treaty

Gorbachev: Troop withdrawal cleared way for treaty in Berlin for anniversary celebrations

BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) -- Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev is to join Germany's ex-chancellor Helmut Kohl in Berlin to mark the 10th anniversary of the treaty that ended the division of Germany.

It signals the start of celebrations that will finish on October 3, when reunified Germany completes its first decade.

Gorbachev will make the keynote address at an event hosted by the Free Democratic Party on Tuesday.

Kohl, making a rare public appearance following a funding scandal in his Christian Democrats party, is not expected to speak.

It was Gorbachev's willingness to pull nearly 400,000 Soviet troops out of formerly communist East Germany -- in return for financial indemnities from Kohl's government in Bonn -- which made possible the "Two-Plus-Four" Treaty of September 12, 1990.

It was signed in Moscow by the foreign ministers of the four victorious powers which occupied Germany after World War Two -- the Soviet Union, United States, France and Britain -- and the governments of the two Germanys, which merged three weeks later.

Rare public appearance for Germany's former chancellor, Helmut Kohl

Gorbachev met Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Berlin on Monday.

In a speech to his ruling Social Democratic Party, Schroeder hailed the freedoms east Europeans had won with the end of communism but also warned against "neo-liberal fundamentalism" that subjugated social values to global market economics.

The reunification celebrations are likely to be rather more subdued than last year's extravagant commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, the event which marked the beginning of the end for the division of Europe into competing blocs.

The main official event, in Dresden on October 3, has been overshadowed by a dispute over whether Kohl, 70, should take part because his role in the funding scandal remains unclear.

In the end, the former chancellor spared his party colleagues the embarrassment of barring him by saying he would stay away.

Ten years on, many of the 17 million east Germans remain substantially poorer than their 65 million western counterparts though very much better off than Gorbachev's compatriots in Russia or citizens elsewhere in the former Soviet bloc.

Nonetheless, the message of official celebrations will be that Germany's new-found unity has been a success, though much investment is still needed in rebuilding the east's economy.

The other main speaker Tuesday will be Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who as West German foreign minister played a key role in winning Soviet approval for a treaty under which the united Germany remained a member of NATO.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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