Voice of America, 99-11-09

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From: The Voice of America <gopher://gopher.voa.gov>

CONTENTS

[01] CLINTON - GREECE (L-ONLY) BY DEBORAH TATE (WHITE HOUSE)

[02] CLINTON-EUROPE (S) BY DAVID GOLLUST (WHITE HOUSE)

[03] BERLIN WALL ANNIVERSARY (L-O) BY RON PEMSTEIN (BERLIN)

[04] BERLIN WALL ANNIVERSARY-REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK BY GIL BUTLER (BERLIN)

[05] NY ECON WRAP (S&L) BY ELAINE JOHANSON (NEW YORK)

[06] TUESDAY'S EDITORIALS BY ERIKA EVANS (WASHINGTON)

[01] CLINTON - GREECE (L-ONLY) BY DEBORAH TATE (WHITE HOUSE)

[02] CLINTON-EUROPE (S) BY DAVID GOLLUST (WHITE HOUSE)

INTRO: President Clinton, in an address marking the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, has appealed for more financial support from Congress for foreign aid, international debt relief, and payment of America's U-N arrears. V-O-A's David Gollust reports from the White House.

TEXT: Mr. Clinton says opponents of engagement abroad are disproportionately represented in Congress, but the United States needs to maintain the will to lead in international affairs to consolidate the gains of the last decade. In an address at Washington's Georgetown University, the President said Europe still faces major challenges in the post-Cold War era -- the most important being the building of a democratic and stable Russia:

[03] BERLIN WALL ANNIVERSARY (L-O) BY RON PEMSTEIN (BERLIN)

INTRO: Germany is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the day when the Berlin Wall no longer divided Europe. Correspondent Ron Pemstein in Berlin reports.

TEXT: The scenes of joyous East Germans surging across the Berlin Wall on November Ninth, 10-years ago, are being repeated on television screens around the clock. For those too young to remember where the wall once divided families in this city, the path it once took has been printed in the newspapers. Three leaders of 1989 spoke to a festive session of the German parliament to remind people of that time, when the Cold War came to an end. Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev -- speaking through an interpreter -- says he has no regrets about letting the two German nations unite.

[04] BERLIN WALL ANNIVERSARY-REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK BY GIL BUTLER (BERLIN)

INTRO: On November 9th, 1989, the Berlin Wall came down leading to German unification. It was a defining event in a momentous time that saw the end of the Cold War. Germans celebrated unification with Beethoven's great Choral symphony, but the end of the German Democratic Republic has not been without problems. (This week,) VOA's Gil Butler has been reporting on Germany ten years after the fall of the Wall and (in this final report) he shares some thoughts from his reporter's notebook about his latest visit to Berlin.

TEXT: Ten years ago, while the Wall was still here, the few meters between Checkpoint Charley and East Berlin's border amounted to a journey to another era - another world. You left modern West Berlin behind and entered a grim and somehow grimy world of state control - the world of Erich Honecker and Communist East Germany. The main street - Unter Den Linden - may have had the triumphal Brandenburg gate at one end, but it had no shops to speak of, no brightly lighted cafes. There is still a transition going from west to east, but it is more subtle. While West Berlin has a vibrant, late night street life, East Berlin seems an early-to-bed governmental kind of place - which it is. Since early this year, Berlin has resumed its status as Germany's capital. The center part of Berlin is a huge construction site as the newly restored capital tries to erase decades of division. Potsdamer Platz is the center of the biggest building project. A bright red building on stilts called "the Infobox" was set up to explain the project. It has become one of Berlin's favorite tourist destinations - seven million visitors so far, most of them Germans. They can even get married at the construction site for about a hundred dollars. Among the new fixtures of East Berlin is a system of big pastel blue and pink pipes that snake over sidewalks and beside old buildings. They are designed to equalize the water table under those buildings while a new city center is constructed in the former no-man's land. If the water level was not controlled, some of these buildings might collapse. The last time I reported from here was the 40th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic-East Germany. As a foreign reporter I was assigned a hotel room in the public-sector Metropole hotel just off Unter Den Linden street. It was a pretty good example of a Communist state's idea of modern convenience. The Metropole hotel is still here. But now it is really a modern hotel, part of the Maritim chain. It doesn't bear any resemblance to the old Metropole and the only nod toward that era is the bar: it's called the "Checkpoint" bar, after Checkpoint Charley the entry point to East Berlin from the American Sector. Nothing remains of the original Checkpoint Charley but a sign -- "you are leaving the American sector" -- and a museum which sells memorabilia and gives tours of rooms with pictures and photographs of the way it was when the Wall was up. Another pre-1989 building is the German Democratic Republic's governmental palace. The Republican palace is a communist era building that has survived just because of the fear that tearing it down would destabilize nearby structures. This building is an important part of the story of the fall of the Wall. Back in October 1989, Erich Honecker was greeting visiting, mostly Communist, leaders at the entrance while out back, state police were breaking up a huge demonstration of young people calling for Mikhail Gorbachev, the most prominent of the visitors, to save them. A short distance away is Alexander Platz, the big square in the eastern part of Berlin.

[05] NY ECON WRAP (S&L) BY ELAINE JOHANSON (NEW YORK)

INTRO: Stock prices in the United States were lower today (Tuesday), as investors took profits from a higher market. VOA correspondent Elaine Johanson reports from New York:

TEXT: The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 101 points, just under one percent, closing at 10- thousand-617. The Standard and Poor's 500 index fell 11 points to 13-hundred-65. And the Nasdaq index lost six-tenths of one percent, ending a seven-day streak of record closings. Analysts were not concerned. They said the stock market was taking a break, after the run-up in prices over the past week, especially in the Nasdaq (index).

[06] TUESDAY'S EDITORIALS BY ERIKA EVANS (WASHINGTON)

INTRO: The 10-year anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall is being given great attention in U-S editorials. There is also some discussion of drug- fueled violence in Colombia, and Mexico's first-ever primary election. Now, here is ______________ with a closer look and some excerpts in today's Editorial Digest.

TEXT: Ten years ago today (November 9, 1989) the Berlin Wall, which stood to divide free people in western Germany and those bound by communism in the East, finally came down. The border existed for 28- years as communism's most symbolic barrier. The demise of the wall became a dramatic expression of the failure of a Soviet Empire and the end of a Cold War with the United States and its allies. U-S editorials are commemorating the anniversary. The national daily newspaper, "U-S-A Today", offers the viewpoint of the historic occasion and what it has since meant for German citizens. Voice: When the wall came down, out rushed hundreds of thousands of migrants, tales of horror, hopes for democracy, thirsts for God, and people's natural desires to make free choices about how to live and prosper. .The task of building democracies and capitalism on the rubble of communism has not been easy, though. . In Eastern Germany, for instance, where unemployment runs at 35-percent, a recent poll showed that while few want a return to communism, 65-percent of citizens do not feel they are a part of a united Germany. .Delivering the promise of November 9, 1989 to those who have not seen it remains a challenge. Some answers lie in sweeping out more of the old: the rubble of communist institutions, hard- line politicians and economic controls. That could take another decade or more. There is inspiration, though, in the knowledge that where there was once barbed wire, guards and attack- dogs, Central European capitals glisten in their restored, centuries-old beauty.

TEXT: That was the view of "U-S-A Today". "The Wall Street Journal" points out the role of former U-S president, Ronald Reagan in pulling the wall down.

VOICE: .The physical breaching of the Wall would not have been possible without the sustained moral pounding that has softened the foundation upon which it stood. It was a force most literally expressed by Ronald Wilson Reagan two-years earlier when he came to Berlin to present his own challenge to the Soviet leader: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." .Mr. Reagan calmly declared communism to be a "sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written." .But surely the lesson of 1989 is that human beings are born to be free, that a confidence in this proposition is infectious, and that - as Mr. Reagan would no doubt have reminded us - we would do our best by our future to look at the pulling down of the Berlin Wall as a beginning not an end.

VOICE: This unprecedented transition is still painful for those going through it, and some are nostalgic for the past. But those difficulties cannot dim the significance of this date. .The mentality born of communism is not yet dead, however. Those who never experienced democratic rule can be susceptible to strongmen or nationalist leaders. .But these threats do not approximate the danger that haunted the world for half a century, the threat of an all-out nuclear warfare between two superpowers. That threat began to evaporate as soon as the Wall fell. Whatever dangers we face in the new century after the Wall, we have been freed from the nightmare vision of World War III.

TEXT: Efforts to bring an end to Colombia's drug violence is also a prevalent topic of discussion in U- S editorial columns. "The Washington Post" is concerned that not enough recent attention is being given to halting the drug-fueled civil wars south of the U-S border.

VOICE: In the current (U-S) budget negotiations, no one seems to be looking for money for Colombia. .This momentum should not be squandered. Colombia may not deserve billions in aid, but the United States can not walk away from the very peace process it has fostered. Making peace requires money. and as the congressional leaders wisely said themselves, a collapsing narco-state just hours from America's borders does not serve the national interest.

TEXT: And finally, American newspapers are giving some attention to the election in Mexico earlier this week. "The Los Angeles Times", in California, calls the democratic vote an exciting start.

VOICE: In Mexico's first-ever primary election, the party in power showed its strength and delivered an impressive victory for the candidate of the establishment, Francisco Labastida Ochoa. Despite this business-as-usual outcome, things have irreversibly changed in Mexico's political landscape, because for the first time it was 10-million voters, not a powerful politician, making the decision. For the past 70-years, every president had named his successor, choosing the man who would be the candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and by extension president of Mexico. .Two strong candidates from two strong opposition parties will now challenge the PRI presidential candidate as never before. Unlike in decades past, no one today can say for certain who will win in the presidential election July 2nd, a development very much worth cheering.

TEXT: With that commentary from the "Los Angeles Times", we conclude this sampling of comment from the editorial pages of Tuesday's U-S newspapers.
NEB/ENE/RAE 09-Nov-1999 13:30 PM EDT (09-Nov-1999 1830 UTC)
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Source: Voice of America

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