World leaders pay tribute to Kohl at EU memorial

STRASBOURG, France — Current and past world leaders gathered Saturday to bid farewell to the late Helmut Kohl, recalling the former German chancellor as a man who was instrumental in uniting Europe and bringing about reconciliation between former adversaries on the continent.

Kohl, who died June 16 at the age of 87, was the first person to be honored with an official memorial event by the European Union in the French city of Strasbourg.

Kohl was widely regarded as having skillfully overcome the fears of Germany’s neighbors when an end to the country’s decades-long division into a communist east and a democratic west first became a realistic possibility in the late 1990s.