"Obsessed" Thatcher warned French of rampant Kohl

By Sophie Hardach

PARIS (Reuters) - Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher warned France's ambassador months before German's 1990 reunification of a domineering Chancellor Helmut Kohl who "sees himself as the master," diplomatic notes revealed on Thursday.

In secret archives unveiled to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov 9., 1989, French diplomats describe an "obsessed" and "bitter" Thatcher's fear of a united Germany and her proposal to join forces with Russia to contain the threat.

"Kohl is capable of anything," France's ambassador to Britain, Luc de La Barre de Nanteuil, quoted Thatcher as telling him during a dinner with French businessmen at his residence in London on March 13, 1990.

"He has become a different man, he does not know himself any more, he sees himself as the master and begins to act like that. You have to see for example how he behaves with (then Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev," she said according to the confidential report.

Nanteuil was struck by Thatcher's bitterness, noting that while she was pleased with the end of communism, she did not express any joy over eastern Europe's new-found freedom.

"The 1990s begin with euphoria, they risk ending in catastrophe," said Thatcher, whose anti-European Union stance culminated in her forced resignation in December 1990.

France and Britain, western Europe's two nuclear powers, needed to link up in the face of the "German danger," but this alone would not be enough, she told Nanteuil.

Once Russia was transformed into a free-market democracy, it could act as a necessary counterweight, she said.