U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has met German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas at the former border between East and West Germany ahead of festivities to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The two officials were visiting the village of Moedlareuth, which was divided during the Cold War between East and West Germany.
The border, which was one of the most heavily guarded in the world during the Cold War, came down in a peaceful popular revolution on November 9, 1989.
Pompeo has known about the village of just 50 inhabitants since the time he served as a tank unit commander in West Germany in the 1980s.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (C), German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (R) and U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell (2nd from L) stand at a still-standing portion of the former fortified border between East Germany and West Germany while touring the memorial site there on November 7, 2019 in Moedlareuth, Germany.
Pompeo, formerly the head of the CIA, landed late on November 6 in Nuremberg and was greeted by the U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell.
The United States and Germany are reaffirming the strategic partnership and alliance under NATO, rejecting French President Emmanuel Macron’s view that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is experiencing “brain death.”
“I think NATO remains an important, critical, perhaps historically, one of the most critical strategic partnerships in all of recorded history,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday at Leipzig, Germany, during a news conference with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.
On November 7 he met U.S. troops stationed in the Bavarian towns of Grafenwoehr and Vilseck.
The United States has around 35,000 soldiers remaining in Germany, with 10,000 in Grafenwoehr and Vilseck.
