Doubts grow over Sarkozy's personal Berlin Wall story (Roundup)

Nov 9, 2009, 14:34 GMT

Paris - A controversy arose in France Monday over President Nicolas Sarkozy's Facebook account of his visit to Berlin on November 9, 1989, for the fall of the Wall, with one newspaper suggesting that he was not in the German capital until a week later.

The pro-Sarkozy daily Le Figaro made available on its web site a story dated November 18, 1989, which appeared to prove that Sarkozy's traveling companion for the trip to the Wall, former prime minister Alain Juppe, traveled to Berlin on November 16, 1989, and not on November 9.

It also cited other news reports from the time that Juppe was accompanied on the Berlin visit by Sarkozy, among others.

In addition, Le Figaro posted an article dated November 10, 1989, which reported that on November 9 Juppe had attended a ceremony commemorating the anniversary of the death of General Charles de Gaulle in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, where the former president is buried.

Also present at the ceremony were 'all the representatives of the current streams of the Gaullist movement,' which would likely have included Sarkozy, who was deputy head of the Gaullist RPR party at the time and a regular participant at the annual commemoration.

November 16 was also the date Juppe gave for his Berlin visit in an autobiography. On the other hand, in an interview posted on TV5.org, Juppe said he was in Berlin 'the day after the Wall fell, on November 10.' But on his own blog he now declares that he was there on the 9th.

Asked which of the three dates was correct, a flustered spokesman for Juppe could only say, 'One of them.'

On his Facebook page, Sarkozy wrote that he and Juppe had made the trip to the Wall on November 9, 1989, because of 'information coming out of Berlin, that seemed to announce a change' was imminent.

However, several French internet media noted that it would have been unlikely for Sarkozy to have received such information on the morning of that day since news that East Germans would be allowed to travel to the West was not reported until the evening.

In addition, according to Alain Auffray's blog for the daily Liberation, Sarkozy could not have joined 'a large and jubilant crowd' at the Brandenburg Gate, as he wrote.

On the evening of November 9, the crowds massed in East Berlin, at Prenzlauer Berg, Auffray says. 'West Berliners did not begin attacking the Wall until the next day, November 10,' he writes.

Asked about the apparent discrepancies in Sarkozy's story, Franck Louvrier, his press and communications advisor, insisted to the German Press Agency