World Notes TREATIES

Secretary of State James Baker called it "a rendezvous with history." Said Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze: "We have closed the book on World War II and started a new age." The two men were describing the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, signed in Moscow last week by the U.S., the Soviet Union, Britain, France and the two Germanys. As Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev looked on, West German Foreign Minister Hans- Dietrich Genscher and East German Prime Minister Lothar de Maiziere affixed their signatures, followed by the foreign ministers of the four Allied powers. Then the seven men marked the occasion by shaking hands and drinking a champagne toast.

The accord ends the postwar rights of the World War II Allies in Germany and effectively marks the end of the cold war that began as soon as the defeat of Germany was completed. It puts the Big Four stamp of approval on the Oct. 3 unification of East and West Germany and states that the country will never try to claim land forfeited to Poland after World War II. The new Germany also agrees to renounce the manufacture, possession and control of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.