LONDON — As the lights of Southeast and Central Europe go out and gas supplies dwindle, leaders of these vulnerable countries must be wishing they had listened to Margaret Thatcher long ago.
In 1981 the British prime minister warned then German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt about the extreme danger of over-reliance on Russian gas as a major energy source. This was at a dinner party held at the German Embassy in London's Belgrave Square.
All this was long before the Berlin Wall came down and Germany was re-united. The German chancellor revealed at the dinner table that the Bundesrepublik (West Germany) had entered into contracts with the Soviets to supply more than 20 percent of his country's daily gas needs and Thatcher thought this was madness. Her concerns were dismissed by Schmidt, who said the Communists were reliable suppliers and anyway needed the Germans as customers.