BERLIN U.S. President Bill Clinton began Wednesday a two-day visit to Germany to mark the 50th anniversary of the Berlin airlift and to make a major policy speech on U.S.-Europe relations. He will also be making Thursday the first official visit by a U.S. president to the former East Germany, when he travels to Eisenach in Thuringia state to visit an Opel automobile manufacturing plant.

Clinton is to meet Wednesday with Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Potsdam near Berlin and then travel back to the German capital where at 1730 GMT he is to speak at the Schauspielhaus Concert Hall. There clinton will deliver a speech that U.S. ambassador John Kornblum said would be an important look at the future of U.S.-Europe relations. In Washington, national security adivosr Sandy Berger said that Clinton, four years after his first visit to Berlin, wanted to outline the next steps towards a peaceful, democratic Europe. Kohl and Clinton are to discuss NATO enlargement, the situation in the Serbian province of Kosovo and in Bosnia, European integration and the upcoming G8 summit at the weekend in Birmingham, England. (AFP)