Bush Renews Demand in Germany to Remove ‘Rusting Iron Curtain’

President Bush told cheering Germans today that the time is right to make Europe “whole and free” and he called on Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to tear down “the rusting Iron Curtain.”

The President did not directly endorse the reunification of Germany, but he renewed a demand that the Berlin Wall be dismantled.

“The world has waited long enough,” Bush declared. “We seek self determination for all of Germany and all of Eastern Europe. We will not relax. We must not waver.”

Maximum Publicity

Bush then flew to London for a private evening meeting with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher after a day in West Germany arranged for maximum publicity.

Events included a colorful cruise on the Rhine River and a visit to Ambassador Vernon Walters’ home, where hundreds of American children whose parents work in West Germany were assembled to wave paper flags and cheer.

But the centerpiece was clearly the speech in Mainz. Showing the confidence that marked his performance earlier in the week at a NATO summit meeting in Brussels, Bush challenged the Soviet Union to dismantle the barbed wire-topped wall erected 28 years ago to divide the old German capital.

Throwing Gorbachev’s use of the term glasnost, or openness, back at the Soviet leader, he said Berlin should be “a place of cooperation, not a point of confrontation.”

As he did during a visit to Bonn as vice president in June, 1987, Bush in Mainz called for expanded air access to Berlin and the staging of more international meetings and sports events there.

Bush said as mine fields and barbed-wire fences are being removed between Hungary and Austria, “so must they fall through Eastern Europe.”

He added: “Let Berlin be next.”

The crowd assembled in a hall in this Rhineland city vigorously applauded every reference to erasing the division of Europe that followed the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

Bush praised Germany as a cradle of democracy, made no reference to the war or its atrocities and said:

“The passion for freedom cannot be denied forever. The world has waited long enough. The time is right. Let Europe be whole and free.”

New Military Proposal

In contrast, Bush gave the crowd at the ambassador’s residence a brief, campaign-style speech.

“I hope what happened in NATO guarantees the future,” he said of the decision taken by the 16 allied governments Tuesday to challenge Gorbachev with a new proposal for reductions in troops, tanks, artillery and combat aircraft.

Bush has called for completion of a conventional forces agreement within a year, but Secretary of State James A. Baker III acknowledged today that the timetable may be too optimistic.