Disarmament requires trust.

Trust cannot be commanded; and yet it is also correct that the only one who earns trust is the one who is prepared to grant trust.

I have left the federal government and the German Bundestag; I have resigned from all my positions in the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

War is not the quintessential emergency in which man has to prove himself, as my generation learned at its school desks in the days of the Kaiser; rather, peace is the emergency in which we all have to prove ourselves.

The first thing I see is the obligation to serve peace.

Disarmament requires trust.

The time has come - and must come - for multilateral conversations about a secure peace in all of Europe.