yes well i thought it was a glitch, np
And initially it was not Merkel, but Kohl who was left to Germany. Complete standstill for decades to come.
(Google translation)
"A unified Germany, anchored in a changed (political) NATO, whose treaty area is not shifted east."
This is a memorial note of the US Secretary of State James Baker after a conversation on 9 February 1990 with the Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom he summarized the "final result" of the interview.
As the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" (FAZ) further reported on Tuesday, the historian Mary Elise Sarotte of the University of Southern California at the annual convention of American historians in New York presented and explained this generally unknown fact.
"That meant: Nato should not even be extended to the territory of the GDR. Baker left a letter for Kohl, who visited Moscow a day after him. Accordingly, he had asked Gorbachev before the choice whether he would prefer a non-aligned Germany without US troops or a Germany with Nato bond and the assurance that the alliance area should not 'one inch' grow, "adds the FAZ.
Kohl then made an offer to Gorbachev on the Bakers line, with which he obtained Soviet approval for reunification.
The failure of Gorbachev had been to give written confirmation of the freezing of geopolitical status.In addition, an initial secret note published in 2009 on Genscher's statement of 10 February 1990 on Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze reads:
"BM (Federal Minister): We are aware that joining a united Germany with NATO raises complicated questions. For us, however, it is clear: NATO will not expand to the east. "Genscher remembered what had happened in 1956 in the Hungarian uprising: Parts of the insurgents had announced that they wanted to join the Western alliance, and thus Moscow had the pretext for a military intervention delivered. As far as the GDR was concerned, Genscher explicitly added: "As for the remainder, the non-expansion of NATO, this applies in general."