Mr. President,
Dear Mikhail!

From the bottom of my heart I congratulate you on your birthday, which is very special occasion this time and I give you my best wishes of happiness and good.

I welcome this opportunity to thank you for all you, as a leader, did for the cause of peace on our planet and to overcome the split of Europe and Germany. Your new thinking as well as perestroika were the basis for the shift in the Soviet policies and created a new future for the peoples of the Soviet Union. Your policy contributed to the victory of the reformatory movements in the then Warsaw Pact countries.

Your name is closely associated with the end of the Cold War and the arms race. The peaceful revolution in the GDR would have been inconceivable without your activity. Without your sagacity and your support of the peoples' right to self-determination the reunification of Germany would not have occurred. We, the Germans, would never forget and would always be thankful to you for that.

And in the difficult times - here I'm referring to the November 9 night, 1989 - you proved to be a friend of the Germans. You believed us, the Germans, and thus created the key preconditions for us to be able to reach the reunification. That is why we shall always remember you with gratitude.

Thanks to your new thinking, your intellect and your sense of humor you won great popularity and even love in Germany. I shall never forget our talks during our numerous meetings when we spoke about the future of the Germans and the Russians. We also pondered over our history and the lengthy periods of peaceful and good coexistence. I should like to thank you personally for those fruitful talks and cordial and trusting mutual understanding.

I wish you a life rich in events, happiness and good health. God bless you.

Your Helmut Kohl