*EPF109 06/14/2004
World Leaders Remember Ronald Reagan
(Thatcher, Mulroney, Mbeki and others recall former president) (1010)

By Helen I. Rouce
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th president of the United States, was honored June 11 in a solemn state funeral under the soaring heights of Washington's National Cathedral, where he was remembered by President Bush as "an enduring symbol" of the United States who "believed that America was not just a place in the world, but the hope of the world."

Among the dignitaries who attended the service were British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Prince Charles, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Irish President Mary McAleese, South African President Thabo Mbeki, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and former U.S. presidents Clinton, Carter, Ford and George H.W. Bush, who, like his son, delivered a eulogy.

Reagan also was eulogized by former prime ministers Margaret Thatcher of Britain and Brian Mulroney of Canada. The 78-year-old Thatcher was present at the service but delivered her remarks by videotape because of ill health.

Speaking with quiet reverence and sincerity, Thatcher said she had lost "a dear friend," calling Reagan "such a cheerful and invigorating presence." "His politics," Thatcher said, "had a freshness and optimism that won converts from every class and every nation, and, ultimately, from the very heart of the Evil Empire."

While "others prophesied the decline of the West," she said, "he inspired America and its allies with renewed faith in their mission of freedom. Others saw only limits to growth -- he transformed a stagnant economy into an engine of opportunity. Others hoped, at best, for an uneasy cohabitation with the Soviet Union. He won the Cold War -- not only without firing a shot, [but] also by inviting enemies out of their fortress and turning them into friends."

Fondly referring to Reagan several times as "Ronnie," Thatcher noted that she and the former president had worked closely together and had talked "regularly" both before and after his presidency, and thus she had "had time and cause to reflect on what made him a great president."

Reagan "knew his own mind," she said. He had firm principles, firm leadership and firm and unyielding resolve. Yet "nothing was more typical of Ronald Reagan," said Thatcher, than the "large-hearted magnanimity" he showed when offering cooperation to the leader who emerged after the fall of communism.

Observing that there was "perfect sympathy" between Reagan and the American people, she characterized his effect on the rest of the world thusly: "With the lever of American patriotism, he lifted up the world, and so today, the world, in Prague, in Budapest, in Warsaw, in Sofia, in Bucharest, in Kiev, and in Moscow itself, the world mourns the passing of The Great Liberator and echoes his prayer: ����God Bless America.'"

Mulroney said "the quintessential Ronald Reagan" was "the leader we respected, the neighbor we admired, and the friend we loved."

"At home and on the world stage, his were not the pallid etchings of a timorous politician," Mulroney said. "They were the bold strokes of a confident and accomplished leader." Like Thatcher, he praised Reagan's confrontation of Soviet communism.

Mulroney recalled a comment, in French, that President Mitterrand had made in Brussels about Reagan, roughly translated as, "He really has a sense of the state about him." What Mitterrand meant, Mulroney said, "is that there is a vast difference between the job of president and the role of president.

"Ronald Reagan fulfilled both," Mulroney said, "with elegance and ease, embodying, himself, that unusual alchemy of history and tradition and achievement and inspirational conduct and national pride, that defined a special role that the president of the United States of America must assume at all times at home and around the world. ...

"No one understood it better than Ronald Reagan, and no one could more eloquently summon his nation to high purpose or bring forth the majesty of the presidency and make it glow better than the man who referred to his own nation as ����a city on a hill,'" Mulroney said.

Former President George Bush, as did the other eulogists, pointed to Reagan's closeness to his wife Nancy and to his many fine personal qualities. As Reagan's vice president for eight years, Bush said, he learned kindness, courage, decency, humility and humor.

To illustrate that humor, Bush said of Reagan: "When asked, ����How did your visit go with Bishop Tutu?' he replied, ����So-so.'"

South African President Thabo Mbeki, who also attended the funeral, remembered Reagan's significance to the eventual ending of apartheid in an interview with Juan Williams, broadcast on National Public Radio.

"For South Africans ... for those of us who were part of the struggle against apartheid, it was actually during Reagan's presidency [that] the United States government started dealing with the ANC [African National Congress]," Mbeki said. "... It was very important because the South African regime had been counting on the continued isolation of the ANC by the developed Western world, as ����a terrorist organization,' because that justified their campaign of repression in South Africa against the ANC.

"Whatever else might have happened before that, with regard to the role and the place of the U.S. government and President Reagan, those of us who were involved in that struggle can't forget that. You'd gotten to that turning point which proved to have been the start of the decline of the apartheid regime in South Africa."

Other tributes to Reagan, as reported by MSNBC News, included this comment from German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, sent to President Bush in a condolence letter: "His engagement in overcoming the East-West conflict and his vision of a free and united Europe created the conditions for change that in the end made the restoration of German unity possible."

And former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, who served from 1982 to 1987, hailed Reagan as an "indispensable friend of the Japanese people."

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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