Section A · Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, November 10, 1999
World
Germans remember Berlin Wall's fall
Historic event's anniversary celebrated amid separation
The Associated Press
BERLIN—Germans marked the 10th anniversary yesterday of the night that changed the world: when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down and jubilant residents from East and West, separated for decades by the Cold War, joined to celebrate its demise.
Although Nov. 9 is not a national holiday — meaning Germans still have to go to work and school — officials were expecting up to 100,000 revelers to join evening celebrations at stages set up along the former death strip that once split East and West Berlin.
"What a wonderful time: East Germans freeing themselves, the start toward unity, the overcoming of the East-West confrontation, the fall of the Wall," parliamentary president Wolfgang Thierse told lawmakers and invited guests — including former world leaders George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, at an afternoon ceremony on the Reichstag on live national television.
Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who united Germany in 1890, called it a time of great fortune for
Germans at the end of a century marked by the great catastrophes of two world wars and the atrocities committed against many people in the name of Germany.
"We should treat unity as a gift and a chance for the future," he said.
But all too often since then, Germans have focused on their enduring differences. Yesterday's celebrations also were meant to bring easterners and westerners together in a show of unity not seen since that jubilant night 10 years ago when Berliners chipped away at the reviled Wall.
The festivities last night got off to a slow start as darkness fell in a steady drizzle.
Several thousand people gathered at the Brandenburg Gate, where a jazz band played on the stage set up on brightly lit Pariser Platz.
Not far away, a couple wiped tears from their eyes as they watched a film about the Wall's collapse being projected onto a building at the former site of Checkpoint Charlie, the famed east-west crossing.
Official observances began with a religious service in central Berlin and a ceremony at City Hall in the heart of former East Berlin.
"For a few moments, Berlin was the center of the world," Mayor Eberhard Diepgen said at City Hall, recalling images of euphoric East Berliners streaming through the Wall, welcomed by their western neighbors. "These pictures of joy are something we should remember as a foundation for the future."
There were, however, further reminders yesterday of the tangible differences that remain between eastern and western Germany.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder acknowledged in parliament that much work remained to be done. "We do know that, together, we can make it." he said.
Opposition lawmakers seized on the figures to question the government's commitment to improving the living standards of easterners.
The latest unemployment data showed improvement in the west, to 8.2 percent in October, while the rate in the formerly communist, still-struggling east worsened to 16.9 percent.
Rock, folk and classical musicians will perform on five stages in former "no man's land" — the barren strip that separated two parallel Walls, now a bustling hub of construction and development as government and business return to the heart of Berlin.
There also were moments for reflection on a date that coincides with the 61st anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, when Nazis destroyed more than 250 synagogues throughout Germany.
Russians continue air raids, bombing in Chechnya
The Associated Press
GROZNY, Russia—Russia said yesterday it had no intention of ending its raids against Chechnya despite mounting international criticism, and federal forces continued battering towns and rebel positions in the breakaway republic.
Rain, snow and fog impeded air operations, but Russian jets still flew more than 20 raids above southern Chechnya, where rebels are holding positions in the mountains, the Interfaax news agency said, citing regional military headquarters.
Russian ground forces also shelled Bamut, a southwestern town, and Gudermes, Chechnya's second-largest city. Both have been under heavy Russian fire for weeks.
Russian officials have maintained their stony rejection of criticism.
Russia's intensifying campaign in Chechnya, which began with air raids on Sept. 5, is a concern in the West, but
Helicopters fired rockets on the northern outskirts of the capital, Grozny. No casualty figures were available from Tuesday's offensive.
If Russia doesn't destroy the militants now, we will face them a fourth, fifth and a 10th time, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said yesterday.
"We are dealing with well-organized gangs of international terrorists," he said after meeting with the families of Russian policemen killed in the line of duty. He said the Chechnya campaign is the only possible way to destroy the terrorists at their bases.
Russia launched the campaign after militants based in Chechnya twice invaded the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan this summer. Russia also blamed the rebels for blowing up four apartment buildings in Russia, killing about 300 people.
Russian ground forces took the flat lands in the northern third of Chechnya with little difficulty in October, but their progress has been mired by winter weather and the mountainous terrain of the south.
Despite heavy cloud cover and rain on
Jason Williams/KANSAN
The bombings targeted the rebel stronghold of Urus-Martan, about 12 miles southwest of Grozny, as well as militant camps in a southern mountain canyon.
Jets also mined two sections of roads and damaged a bridge in the south, where militants have bases.
After civilian deaths and the plight of some 200,000 refugees, foreign leaders are questioning Russia's offensive.
U. S. State Department representative James P. Rubin said Monday that Russia was not in keeping with the Geneva Conventions by inflicting casualties on civilians.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said yesterday that Chechen refugees were continuing to stream into the neighboring Russian region of Ingushetia at a rate of 4,000 per day.
Meanwhile, Georgian authorities yielded during the weekend to Russia's demand to shut their border with Chechnya. Georgia is the only other nation to share a border with Chechnya.
Georgian officials allowed about 1,500 women and children to flee from the war into Georgia before the border was closed,
Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze said Monday.
International Monetary Fund managing director to leave post before finishing term
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON—International Monetary Fund Director Michel Camdessus, who guided the agency through the turbulence of the Asian currency crisis, announced yesterday he would step down early next year.
Camdessus has two years left in his third five-year term.
The 66-year-old Frenchman had been under tremendous pressures the past two years as he was forced to keep a relentless travel schedule, flying from one crisis country to another to oversee multibillion-dollar bailout packages.
"Personal reasons of which I did not even want to hear, particularly as we were in the midst of the Asian crisis lead me to this decision — a decision I would have never thought would be so hard to take." Camdessus said in a statement he read to hundreds of IMF employees hastily assembled in the towering marble atrium at IMF headquarters, three blocks from the White House.
Camdessus said he planned to leave in mid-February after the agency's 24-member executive board had selected a successor.
"This is, I think, the right time," he said. "It is hard for me to tell you this. The world economic outlook allows us to anticipate favorable trends for the world economy, so I see it as my duty now to suggest that you take advantage of these favorable circumstances to select my replacement."
Camdessus' early departure from the job of managing director, which he has held for 13 years, longer than any other official in the history of the multinational lending agency, had been rumored for some time.
Candessus and the IMF came under heavy criticism for the IMF's handling of the Asian currency crisis, which erupted in Thailand in 1997.
The IMF assembled huge multibillion-dollar bailout packages for a number of countries in an effort to halt the spread of the crisis. Despite the fact that more than $100 billion in emergency resources were put together, the crisis ended pushing 40 percent of the global economy into recession before calm finally was restored to global financial markets.
Camdessus, however, has insisted that while the IMF would have done things differently with the benefit of hindsight, its overall policies of demanding economic reforms had been vindicated by the fact that many of the crisis countries now are enjoying rapid recoveries
Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, on Capitol Hill for a hearing on Social Security, praised Camdessus for the job he had done during a turbulent time in the global economy.
"Michel Camdessus has done an outstanding job as the IMF's longest-serving managing director," Summers said.