Who in 1969 could have believed that we would now enjoy relations with all our neighbours that epitomise what I mean by good-neighbourliness? That

Who in 1969 could have believed that we would now enjoy relations with all our neighbours that epitomise what I mean by good-neighbourliness? That is of course by no means just Germany’s doing There are many we have reason to thank. Nationalism has nothing to do with love of one’s country but with hatred for the countries of others. Where this hatred leads we have seen not just over these past months or in the former Yugoslavia.Willy Brandt, as I recalled on 23 May, spoke of our desire to be a nation of good neighbours. A policy that seeks to build a Europe in which people live in peace side by side must take a strong stand on human rights before people are threatened with deportation, terror and death.We need a policy that does not allow arms exports today only to intervene against their use tomorrow We need to reject nationalism root and branch Nationalism and separatism have the same roots.

The way in which Germany shouldered this responsibility and continues to do so has enhanced our country’s standing in the eyes of the world. What lessons can and should be learnt from the current situation in the former Yugoslavia?
For me, the most important lesson is this: prevention is the best policy if we are to avoid the false alternative of guilt incurred by standing aloof or guilt incurred as a result of military intervention that makes victims also of quite innocent people. In Yugoslavia we witnessed events which scarcely anyone in these closing years of the century believed could or should ever happen again. For the first time since its founding 50 years ago, NATO used military means in Europe, with the Bundeswehr participating in combat operations For two weeks now, the guns have been silent In Kosovo, German soldiers have been greeted as liberators.

But we have yet to build the Pan-European order of peace and security which could ensure that in Europe at any rate, war would no longer be an instrument of policy. If these substances are available to cyclists, they are available to all elite sportsmen and women, who want to get an edge.It remains our responsibility to ensure that our heroes and heroines don’t plunge over that edge.. TEN YEARS after the Iron Curtain was swept away and the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, we are still seeking a new order for Europe and across the world The hostile military blocs of former years are gone. They know their own bodies better than anybody, their reactions, when to take stuff, the substance and the dosage. They’re pros – and that means, at all levels.”Voet isn’t talking about food supplements here.

He is talking about life- threatening substances – he lists more than a dozen young cyclists who are believed to have died from the effects of erythropoietin (EPO) and human growth hormone. Francis’s testimony has got lost a little in the intervening decade. But Voet’s is still fresh, and should be carefully considered.Voet writes of the cyclists, “When I think, that after a positive test, they continue to swear on their mother’s life that they’ve been doped without their knowledge.. They knew, and they always know… Voet speaks from the same expert perspective as did Johnson’s coach Charlie Francis, to the Canadian commission Both men oversaw and administered drugs They knew exactly what was going on. It was the publication of a book, Massacre a la Chaine, which has given us as much insight into the world of elite professional sports as did the Canadian government’s investigation following Ben Johnson’s expulsion from the Seoul Olympic Games 11 years ago.Massacre a la Chaine was written by Willi Voet, the Festina cycle team soigneur, whose arrest, while transporting a minor pharmacy in his car on the opening day of the 1998 Tour, started the farrago.

On that occasion, the lid was lifted on the can of worms by the French sports minister, Marie-George Buffet. His intervention ultimately resulted in a special congress of the International Olympic Committee, whose own president, Juan-Antonio Samaranch, had been widely criticised as much for talking down the importance of dope-testing as for turning a blind eye to financial scandal.It remains to be seen whether anything will come of the new anti-drug legislation that the IOC finally adopted (principal opponents of even the watered-down version were Hein Verbruggen and Sepp Blatter, international chiefs of cycling and football) But there was another result of the Tour de France debacle. I would much rather be writing about elite competition.If only to prove that athletics shouldn’t carry the can alone, we are back to where we were a year ago, after the Tour de France finished in disarray. Something needs to be done – for the benefit of the athletes, for the administrators, for the dope-testers, for the public, and, dare I say it, for the media.