Address by H.E. Lennart Meri, President of the Republic of Estonia, at a Matthiae-Supper in Hamburg on February 25, 1994

As I said, ladies and gentlemen: Estonia is situated very near to Germany and Hamburg. Western, and above all German policy, has to make a fateful choice. Either the neo-imperialist policy of a great eastern power will be tolerated, financed, and in the short term, possibly even profited from; that, dear listeners, would be a policy unable to see an inch further than one’s nose. Or the notions of democracy, feedom, responsibility and peace will be helped on the road to success across the whole gigantic area between the Baltic Sea and the Pacific Ocean; if one wants to do that, the democratic West should resolutely contribute to the stability and security of the medium and smaller-sized states to the east of the German border. Here I mean the whole area of Central Europe, which in my view reaches from the Estonian border town of Narva, on the Baltic Sea, to the Adriatic, also including Ukraine