Berlin's East Side gallery, painted on one of the last remaining remnants of the city's infamous Wall, needs a revamp if it is to survive. But the project remains mired in funding woes and red tape.
German rail company Deutsche Bahn (DB) and the train drivers' union GDL have agreed to enter mediation to be led by two former leading conservative politicians, with the union agreeing to refrain from further strike action during the negotiations.

The mediators agreed to by the two sides were Heiner Geissler and Kurt Biedenkopf, both 77 years old and former leading figures in the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party. DB chief executive Hartmut Mehdorn confirmed that the two men had been agreed on with the GDL and said he was "very pleased that two experienced moderators and recognised personalities had declared their readiness to accept such a sophisticated task." Geissler is a former general secretary of the CDU, while Biedenkopf had previously served as CDU premier of the eastern German state of Saxony. Biedenkopf had served as a mediator in a previous wage dispute at the German railways in the autumn of 2006. Geissler - who had been proposed by the GDL - had served as a mediator four times between 1997 and 2002 in wage disputes in the German construction industry.

The GDL held out an olive branch Thursday evening to accompany the agreement on the mediators. "There will be no strikes during the mediation," a GDL spokesman said in Frankfurt. He said the GDL hoped that the first talks could take place next week. "We are interested in sitting down very quickly at the bargaining table," the union spokesman said. The GDL is hoping that the mediation would lead to a wage agreement between DB and the train drivers separate from a wage deal with the all of the railway company's employees, something which DB has so far categorically rejected.

Source: AA, Abt.6, Ref. 613 using dpa material dated 10 August 2007