Clinton Hails Unity, Freedom in Berlin : Germany: Visit emphasizes U.S. desire to rebuild Europe around the country that once blew it apart.

President Clinton strode through Brandenburg Gate into the former East Berlin on Tuesday, declaring a “monument to conquest” and “tyranny” had now become a gateway to a united Europe.

“Nothing will stop us--all things are possible,” he told tens of thousands of Berliners massed at the structure that long obstructed Berlin’s central boulevard.

“ Berlin ist frei “ -- Berlin is free, the President exclaimed in German.

Joined by German Chancellor Helmut Kohl on a dais before snapping German and U.S. flags, Clinton said: “We stand together where Europe’s heart was cut in half, and celebrate unity. We stand where cruel walls of concrete separated mother from child, and we meet as one family.”

The speech, in a city used as an oratorical prop for celebrated Cold War speeches by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, closed an eight-day European trip partly focused on Clinton’s desire to rebuild Europe around the country that once blew it apart. The nine-minute address offered little in the way of new policy goals but referred again to Clinton’s desire to give a leading role to Europe’s biggest, wealthiest country.

“The Berlin Wall is gone,” said Clinton, who passed beneath the 85-foot triumphal arch as the first President since 1945 to walk on the soil of the former East Germany. “Now we must decide what we will build in its place.”

Clinton, who later attended a ceremony marking the decommissioning of the Army unit that long policed Berlin, alluded to the long ties between the Germans and the United States, the country that had helped rebuild and protect it after the Nazi era.

The President invoked the memory of U.S. soldiers, the pilots who kept the 15-month Berlin airlift alive and the sentries at the famous Checkpoint Charlie border crossing. “I say . . . America is on your side, now and forever,” he told his audience, in German and English, drawing a renewed roar from the crowd.

Clinton praised Berliners’ courage, recalling how, for 28 years of the Berlin Wall, half of the city was “encircled and the other half enslaved.” He remembered how Berliners hurled stones at tanks in the aborted uprising of June 17, 1953 and cited the “civil courage” that led East Germans to begin agitation for an end to their regime five years ago.

“You turned your dreams of a better life into the chisels of liberty,” he said.

But he added that shaping the new era would not be easy. In an indirect reference to anti-foreigner violence in Germany, Clinton said, “We must reject those who would divide us with scalding words about race, ethnicity or religion.”

The speech added an upbeat closing note to a presidential trip marred by the embarrassment of a plummeting dollar and the rejection at last weekend’s economic summit of a Clinton trade proposal.

In Berlin--a liberal city whose eastern sector gave the party run by former Communists 40% of the vote in the last election--signs of the struggles that have convulsed Germany were apparent Tuesday.

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Clinton was met by lusty cheers when he appeared under the gate after a five-minute walk from the Reichstag, the German Parliament building, with Hillary Rodhman Clinton, Kohl and his wife, Hannelore. But the chancellor, who has struggled to guide Germany during its racking transition, was greeted with boos as he approached the microphone. Eberhard Diepgen, the conservative mayor of Berlin, was also booed.

In his remarks, Kohl said that “the experience of history demands that Germany does not stand on the sidelines when peace and freedom in Europe and the world are at stake.” He said that, in the effort to knit a new Europe from the old Soviet empire, “‘the dreadful news reaching us daily from Bosnia shows that we still have a long way to go to reach our goal.”

Brandenburg Gate was modeled on an entry at the Acropolis and was intended as an emblem of Berliners’ aim to make their city another Athens. But over the years, as conquering armies passed beneath it, it became a symbol of militarism--topped with an Iron Cross and Prussian eagle--and later, a monument to the divided city. During the Communist years, the gate fell into the eastern zone; when Reagan delivered his wall speech in 1987, East German troops prowled atop it.

Clinton spoke Tuesday as Berliners enjoyed an uncharacteristic spell of sunny weather during a season when the air is sweetened by the scent of blooming linden trees. The crowd was swelled by children given a holiday to attend the President’s speech. The brash colors of their U.S.-style clothing mingled with the sober tones of older Berliners and east Germans.

Clinton had struggled with his pronunciation of foreign languages earlier in the trip, in Latvia and Poland, and some aides hoped he would not try out the German he learned in three years of high school study. Some critics have pointed out that Kennedy’s phrase “ Ich bin ein Berliner, “ from his 1963 speech at the Berlin City Hall, was ungrammatical; it meant, literally, the President was a jelly-filled pastry.

But Clinton risked slip-ups three times in the speech with German expressions and seemed to satisfy his listeners. “He’s got it down well,” said German listener Andreas Schultz.

Many Berliners in the crowd spoke favorably of Clinton--the older ones often because of their warm memories of America’s postwar role and the younger ones because they found Clinton young and appealing.

“This is something I never thought I would see in my life,” said Uwe Weimann, a retired manager for a large chemical company and a veteran of the 1945 Battle of Berlin. “I am extremely happy that toward the end of my life, I can see positive things.”

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Later, Clinton presided over a ceremony deactivating the U.S. Army’s elite Berlin Brigade, organized in 1961 to oversee military operations in Berlin. Although it never fired a hostile shot, the unit oversaw the exchange of political prisoners and the operations of the well-known Checkpoint Charlie.

Clinton reviewed the 1,000 troops and watched as the flag flying over Ft. McNair was lowered. It was presented to him to take back to the United States. “We are marking the end of a half-century of sacrifice on freedom’s frontier,” the President said. “America salutes you. Mission accomplished.”