Germany was hit with a double shock Monday when veteran Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher announced his resignation and public service workers unleashed their biggest strike since 1974.
The world's longest-serving foreign minister told his Free Democratic Party (FDP) he would quit Chancellor Helmut Kohl's embattled government in May after 18 years in office.Genscher's surprise announcement came as Kohl faced a massive strike that crippled train, bus and streetcar services, stopped garbage collection and left mail piling up in post offices around western Germany.
After sporadic stoppages at the weekend, the OeTV public sector union pledged to strike across a broad front until the cash-strapped government improved its 4.8 percent pay offer.
In Berlin, the city was again divided, with buses in the east running as normal but stopping at the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie and other intersections along the route of the old Wall, as they did before German unity in 1990.