US-German link feted as embassy returns to historic Berlin site

0 Comments | AFP, July, 2008

BERLIN (AFP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel and America's last Cold War leader called Friday for lasting transatlantic friendship as the US embassy in Berlin reopened on the site it last occupied in 1941.

Former president George H.W. Bush said the new mission, built beside the Brandenburg Gate in the former no man's land that divided West and East Berlin, "marked the symbolic rebirth" of US-German ties.

The old embassy was reduced to ruins by World War II air raids and later razed by East German authorities to make space for the Berlin Wall.

Bush, who was in the White House when the Wall fell in 1989, said nearly two decades after he championed reunification, the prospects for cooperation between Washington and Berlin were now limitless.

"Let...