GERMANY: Germany's former chancellor, Helmut Kohl, yesterday gave a gripping account of his tumultuous encounters with his British counterpart Margaret Thatcher, recalling in his memoirs how she once told him: "We've beaten the Germans twice. Now they're back!"
In the latest instalment of his recollections, published yesterday, Mr Kohl recounts the furious reaction of Lady Thatcher - then Mrs Thatcher - when she discovered the Berlin Wall had collapsed.
On November 10th, 1989, a day after the border between East and West Germany was opened, Mr Kohl made a "difficult" phone call to Mrs Thatcher, apprising her of developments. She was "uneasy", he said. The following month, at an EU summit in Strasbourg, Mrs Thatcher launched a "pretty hefty attack on me over the dessert", Mr Kohl says . "I told her that even Margaret Thatcher couldn't stop the Germans from pursuing their destiny . . . Beside herself with rage, Thatcher stamped her feet and screamed: 'That's what you think!'"
More insults from the Iron Lady followed, Mr Kohl writes, when she was obliged in December 1989 to sign a text supporting German unity.
"I will never forget Margaret Thatcher's angry observation: 'We have beaten the Germans twice. Now they're back'."
However, in Berlin yesterday Mr Kohl (75) spoke highly of Mrs Thatcher, saying that of all the European leaders confronted with the consequences of the sudden collapse of the Soviet bloc, she was the most honest.
He added: "She was one of the great personalities in the era I write about - highly intelligent, passionate, power conscious and not too choosy about how she exercised it . . . it was very unpleasant to have her as an opponent. The enmity didn't finish at the end of the day. It carried on the next morning."
The only subject on which Mr Kohl and Mrs Thatcher could agree was their shared enthusiasm for Churchill. Even there, though, there were differences.
"I once told her: 'Margaret, the difference between you and me is that I live in a time after Churchill and you live in the time before him.' She wasn't very happy."
Last night Sir Tim Bell, Lady Thatcher's former adviser, cast doubt on Mr Kohl's version of events. "The quote 'We have beaten the Germans twice' doesn't sound right. I have never heard her behave like that with the head of a foreign country."