First Visit to White House by E. German Leader
President Bush extended the first White House welcome ever to a leader of East Germany today in a meeting he said dramatizes the “magnificent changes” sweeping Europe.
Prime Minister Lothar de Maiziere, who came to office after free elections in March in what was once a hard-line Communist state, heads a government that is expected to make way soon for a single Germany, uniting East and West.
Bush said Sunday he was eager to talk with de Maiziere “about his vision as to the postwar Europe, post-German unification Europe.”
The President posed for photographs with his visitor on the steps overlooking the White House Rose Garden, then ushered him into the Oval Office. The two leaders planned expanded talks in the Cabinet Room and lunch in the White House family quarters.
De Maiziere is not only the first leader of the German Democratic Republic to visit the White House, he is almost certainly the last.
The two Germanys are moving ahead next month with monetary union on a footing that will provide massive subsidies from prosperous West Germany for the financially strapped East.
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