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Schroeder inaugurates Berlin chancellery
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CHANCELLOR Gerhard Schroeder on Wednesday received the keys to a grandiose but controversial new chancellor's office and residence in Berlin.
The architect Axel Schultes handed over a giant key to Schroeder, in a ceremony attended by numerous dignitaries, including all the German cabinet save Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, away on a visit to the United States.
Turning the key in an equally huge symbolic lock, the chancellor said that the inauguration of the new chancellery completed the move of the German government from Bonn to Berlin, which was decided in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent reunification.
Schroeder said the new environment would "stimulate the activity" of the government, and the ceremony was to be followed by a first meeting of ministers of his centre-left government in the new building.
The Social Democrat chancellor has made no secret of the fact that he considers the building much too big and would have preferred something more modest. The design was chosen by his Christian Democrat predecessor, Helmut Kohl.
Alluding to what many see as inappropriate extravagance, Schroeder said on Wednesday that the new edifice was "neither Sans-Souci nor Neuschwanstein", references to the former royal palace in Potsdam and the fairytale lakeside castle of the late King Ludwig of Bavaria.
Since the government moved back to Berlin over the summer of 1999, Schroeder has been using as his chancellery the former headquarters of the East German government.
Total cost of the new German chancellery has run to 212 million dollars, even then, some details were dropped because of the cost.(SD-Agencies)
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