INTERVIEW WITH MR WALDEGRAVE BY RORY JOHNSTON, COI RADIO: 11 SEPTEMBER 1989
Q: Minister, what's your reaction to the Hungarians opening their border?
A: Delight.
I think it's a courageous decision by the Hungarians. It's the right decision and it will bring joy to very many German families.
Q: What effect to you think it's going to have on the post-war divisions of Europe?
A: I think it is in a real sense the beginning of the lifting of the Iron Curtain that Churchill talked about all those years ago in Fulton, Missouri. Now, the division is not yet all over of course and things can go backwards, but it is a major event and it shows that the frozen division of Europe that we've all endured for so long is beginning to melt.
Q: Can you see the East German Government tolerating a large scale exodus for long? Do you think the whole of East Germany could be empty?
A: I think that this East German Government will now be in a considerable muddle as to what to do next. Its own economy must be being damaged and yet it is because it will not make the reforms that other countries in Easter Europe and the Soviet Union are making that people want to leave. If they try to clamp down, well I suppose physically they can stop people escaping, but they won't remove the underlying reasons, in fact they will perhaps stoke up even further and stronger desires for people to leave later.
Q: So what do you think's going to happen in the long run?
A:
I think that as long as we have these old-fashioned Stalinist
regimes trying to swim against the tide, there will be a danger of instability in Eastern Europe. Mr Gorbachev and the Poles and the Hungarians and others have seen that there has to be reforms in