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Merkel lauds "victory of humanity" as Chile's Pinera reaches Berlin

Other News Materials 22 October 2010 19:02 (UTC +04:00)
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera continued his tour of Europe on Friday, buoyed after his country's successful mine rescue, with a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin
Merkel lauds "victory of humanity" as Chile's Pinera reaches Berlin

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera continued his tour of Europe on Friday, buoyed after his country's successful mine rescue, with a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, dpa reported

"This was really a victory of humanity ... the whole world urged you on and shared your emotions," Merkel told him.

Pinera is enjoying record opinion poll ratings after recent economic growth, plus the rescue of 33 miners who were trapped underground for more than two months.

The German chancellor presented Pinera with a signed football jersey from German national squad player Mario Gomez, who shares his name with one of the rescued miners.

In return Pinera gave Merkel a rock from the mine - as he had done in meetings earlier this week with British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Pinera made reference to Germany's own mining rescue miracle, the so-called Wonder of Lengede, in which 11 miners were rescued after spending 14 days underground in 1963.

A version of the German-invented Dahlbusch Bomb was used at the San Jose mine to free the trapped Chilean workers.

"We all followed with bated breath how the 33 miners in Chile were rescued," Merkel said.

Merkel also praised Pinera's "ambitious goals" to fight poverty.

On Thursday Pinera declared in a speech at Berlin's Humboldt University that Chile would be the first nation in Latin America to "defeat poverty."

Pinera said that economic growth of 6 per cent a year would create the conditions for eliminating poverty in less than a decade.

"We must recover our growth rate leadership," the conservative politician and business tycoon said.

Pinera's standing has been boosted by the way his government handled first the Chile earthquake in February, shortly after his January election, and the mining accident in the summer.

Pinera drew comparisons between Germany's defeat of communist dictatorship and reunification in 1990, and the first democratic government in Chile after the fall of Pinochet in the same year.

"As Germany achieved its reunification through the fall of the wall, Chile was witnessing the return of its democracy - and our own walls were torn down," he said.

Pinera was due to meet German President Christian Wulff on Saturday before ending his European tour

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