Reunification

Carrying two official delegations and lofty hopes for Korean reconciliation, two trains pulled out of stations today in North and South Korea and crossed the demilitarized zone on a rail link severed by war almost 60 years ago. The two trains -- one running north, the other south, along each coast -- covered a mere 16 miles each and were billed as a test run of tracks newly laid on the route of Korea's colonial-era railroad.

A senior Taiwanese official in charge of cross-strait policy sought to calm the waters Thursday after a controversial suggestion by President Chen Shui-bian that Taiwan consider scrapping guidelines on eventual unification with rival China. Since they split in 1949, the two adversaries have watched each other warily across the narrow strip of sea that separates them, and even small wording changes are carefully parsed and debated by experts on both sides.

A top U.S. diplomat Friday visited a pilot industrial complex jointly run by the two Koreas in the communist North, the South's Unification Ministry said. Kathleen Stephens, principal deputy assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs, is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the industrial zone in Kaesong, said Unification Ministry spokeswoman Yang Jeong-hwa.

Former President Bush inaugurated the new U.S. Embassy at its pre-World War II site, a return that he said symbolized the fulfillment of "a great and noble dream" of European freedom and unity. Bush, who was president when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and supported German reunification less than a year later, spoke alongside Chancellor Angela Merkel at the site in front of the Brandenburg Gate -- the symbol of Germany's postwar division and then of its unification. The embassy completes the post-reunification rebuilding of the Pariser Platz, in front of the gate, which once stood in the fortified no man's land behind the Berlin Wall.

The pro-reunification governing party of Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Talat won parliamentary elections in the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state, a victory seen as a boost for peace efforts on the divided island, but one that will not allow the party to govern alone. Talat's Republican Turkish Party got 44% of the vote, and the National Unity Party of Dervis Eroglu, which opposes a United Nations plan for reunifying the island, had around 32%, the official elections board reported.

A pro-reunification candidate was elected president of the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state Sunday, riding a wave of frustration over decades of international isolation and a stagnant economy. Mehmet Ali Talat will succeed Rauf R. Denktash, who dominated the enclave's politics for three decades and is retiring. Talat won 56% of the vote for president of the self-declared Turkish Cypriot state; his main rival, Dervis Eroglu, polled 23%.

Across the road from the shuttered sawmill, a man with a shaved head sat behind the counter of the Crime Store, a neo-Nazi boutique selling camouflage thong underwear and CDs with titles such as "It's Our Europe, Not Theirs" and "Rockin' the Reich Volume II." Business, the man said, was good. In this hard-pressed eastern German town, prospects also are strong for the right-wing National Democratic Party, or NPD, which emerged decades ago from the ideological ruins of the Nazi regime.

In a once desolate downtown, where police searched shoppers for weapons during the deadly conflict known as "the Troubles," dramatic changes happened long before the Irish Republican Army announced the end of its armed struggle. As the threat of IRA bombs receded after the group's 1997 cease-fire, new glass and steel buildings went up, and shops began staying open after dark. The IRA has been expected to give up its weapons since the landmark 1998 Good Friday agreement.

While watching child gymnasts tumbling in unison across the field of Kim Il Sung Stadium in a performance heralding the miracle of the North Korean economy, Hwang Seon felt a sharp cramp in her abdomen. Within minutes, the 32-year-old South Korean tourist was whisked by ambulance across town to Pyongyang's maternity hospital. There, doctors delivered a 7-pound, 6-ounce girl who has become an instant celebrity and rare source of optimism in this often-forlorn North Korean capital.

Two Turkish Cypriot parties agreed Sunday to form a coalition government that is committed to reaching a deal to reunite Cyprus before the divided Mediterranean island joins the European Union on May 1. The pact could markedly boost Turkey's chances of joining the EU as well. Leaders of the organization have made it clear that Turkey can't qualify for membership negotiations until the resumption of U.N.