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| Europe |
| Last Cold War Check Points Dismantled: Free Travel Across All of Europe |
| 2007-12-22 |
| BERLIN: In a ceremony marking the final chapter in the unification of Eastern and Western Europe that began more than 18 years ago, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and the leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic and Portugal dismantled border-crossing points on a frontier that had symbolized the Cold War divide. Merkel, a child of that division, stood in freezing temperatures with Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek of the Czech Republic and Prime Minister José Sócrates of Portugal, which holds the rotating European Union presidency. Merkel's parents decided to leave West Germany for East Germany after World War II, and she had no opportunity to travel to the West until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. She called the dismantling of the border crossing a "truly historical moment." Interesting: Merkel, Germany's President, was an East German until Ronald Reagon told Gorbachev "Tear Down This Wall!". Congratulations America, you did this. "We have one Europe, where passport controls from Sweden to Italy, from Portugal to the Baltic states no longer exist," she said. "That is a freedom, a freedom to travel. The schoolchildren of today can experience a normal Europe, something of which our parents and grandparents could only dream." |
| Posted by:www |
| #1 I also means a free movement of jihadis. I question the wisdom of it. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-12-22 17:44 |