France's decision to invite German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to attend June commemorations of the D-Day invasions shows that times have changed in Europe, a government spokesman said on Friday.
It was "with great joy" that Schroeder accepted the invitation to attend the 60th anniversary celebrations on the Normandy beaches, government spokesman Thomas Steg said in Berlin.
Steg stressed the "enormous symbolic meaning" of inviting a German head of state to mark D-Day, signaling the resolution of many post World War II questions that have plagued Europe -- particularly the two former enemies.
"It is a sign that times truly have changed," Steg said.
Schroeder is to be the first German leader to mark an anniversary of the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944.
For the 60th anniversary commemoration, France has invited leaders of World War II's Allied nations, including US President George W. Bush.
Ten years ago, Chancellor Helmut Kohl was not invited to the 50th anniversary ceremony -- a decision that caused sore feelings in Germany and soured relations with France.
French-German ties got a boost in January last year, when the neighbors marked 40 years of reconciliation, pledging to work together at the heart of the EU.
D-Day, while largely credited with launching Europe's liberation from the Nazis, is virtually unknown in Germany. The day is not publicly acknowledged in any way and is little taught in German schools. Only two German veterans were invited, by US veterans groups, to attend the 50th anniversary celebrations in 1994.
"Operation Overlord," the code name for the landings, will be marked with a ceremony at Arromanches, a Normandy town between two of the beaches where soldiers came ashore.
About 21,000 Germans are buried at La Camb in Normandy. A few simple wooden crosses -- erected by German veterans and discreetly apart from the cemetery for the 9,386 fallen US soldiers -- mark the spot above Omaha Beach where the last German forces fell.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS