Kohl calls on divided Germans to work together and unite Europe

The German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, yesterday called on Germans to put all their strength behind the drive to unite Europe, although he admitted that Germany remained a deeply divided nation. Speaking at an official celebration in Stuttgart to mark the seventh anniversary of German reunification, Dr Kohl promised east Germans that they could still rely on help from the west.

"As before, I wish that Germans in both the east and the west were much more prepared to take an interest in the experience and reality of life of the others. Those in the west have the experience and opportunities of decades of freedom. Those in the east can teach the west that freedom is precious and should not be taken for granted," he said.

The former US president, Mr George Bush, said German reunification paved the way for a safer world but he pointed out that the achievement belonged to ordinary people rather than their political leaders.

"It was the people, not the governments, who stood up collectively and said: enough! It was the people, not the governments, who defied the Red Army. And it was the people, not the governments, who led the way to change," he said.

Almost half a million people came to Stuttgart for yesterday's Unity day celebrations, but the rest of Germany greeted the anniversary with a shrug.

In Berlin, however, masked men torched cars and police came under a hail of rocks and bottles. Police said a group of masked individuals set fire to cars parked in the city centre late on Thursday, severely damaging five vehicles, while 13 other people were arrested for attacking a police car with stones and bottles.

About 300 pacifists staged a symbolic protest on Thursday evening at the city's Brandenburg Gate - the same place where a million people gathered seven years ago to hail reunification. Dressed as ghosts, they passed between the pillars of the gate, a symbol of German triumphs, just before midnight, before leaving the area deserted.

"We are against everything military, especially in Germany. They've done enough in this century," said Ms Jutta Kausch of the AMOK committee grouping leftwing and pacifist parties which organised the demonstration.

An opinion poll found that most believe it will take at least another 16 years before Germany is truly united.

In Berlin, the wall that once divided the city often seems to have remained intact within the minds of the people: 90 per cent of those who move house remain on their own side of the city and marriages between easterners and westerners remain uncommon.

The Economics Minister, Mr Gunter Rexrodt, claimed yesterday that the economy in the east was about to improve and that growth would be faster than in the west. This will offer little comfort to the 18 per cent of the eastern workforce who are on the dole, many of whom see little prospect of ever working again.

The novelist Gunter Grass yesterday condemned Dr Kohl's handling of the process of reunification and claimed that the voice of the east had been effectively silenced.

"This was not a merger of the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic but a takeover, a proper colonisation," he said.