Ceremonies were held Thursday to mark the final departure of British, U.S. and French troops from Berlin, almost 50 years after the Allies entered the German capital at the end of World War II.
German Chancellor Helmut Kohl welcomed British Prime Minister John Major, French President Francois Mitterand and U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher with full military honors at the Charlottenburg palace in West Berlin.After lunch in the palace, the leaders were to visit the Tempelhof air base and lay wreaths at the memorial to the Allied airmen who saved Berlin from starvation and collapse during the Soviet blockade of 1948-49.
In 1988, the Allies had more than 12,000 troops in West Berlin, as well as almost 70 tanks.
It was the 1990 two-plus-four treaty between East and West Germany and the four victorious powers that terminated the Allies' rights over Germany and Berlin, and paved the way for reunification.
Russia marked the end of its military presence in Germany last week with ceremonies attended by Kohl and Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
The decision to split the Russian withdrawal ceremony off from those for the three Western Allies unleashed a major dispute between Moscow and Bonn. Yeltsin finally agreed after a compromise was reached allowing the last Russian troops to leave from Berlin, rather than the provincial eastern town of Weimar as originally planned.
But the decision to hold separate farewells met with the approval of many Germans.
They saw the Allied troops in West Berlin as guarantors of the city's freedom and the Soviet forces in the east as an occupying army and the bulwark of an unpopular communist regime.
The Allies are remembered for the airlift they spearheaded between 1948 and 1949, which fed 2 million West Berliners and delivered enough coal to keep them from freezing over the winter during the 11-month Soviet blockade.
The airlift saw hundreds of British and American planes make a total of 1,398 flights, delivering a total of 12,940 tons of food, coal and machinery to the besieged West Berliners.
The Soviet troops, on the other hand, are often remembered for their role in suppressing the East German rebellion of June 17, 1953, where demonstrators calling for free elections and democratic rule were met with Soviet tanks.
After visiting the Airlift Memorial, the leaders were to attend a special ceremony in the Schauspielhaus, a classical theater near the former East German government quarter in east Berlin.