World Notes EAST-WEST

On the day East and West officially proclaimed the end of the cold war at the Paris summit last week, the once unthinkable happened: a Soviet armored vehicle roared across what used to be the Iron Curtain smack into downtown Berlin. Following an argument with his girlfriend, a 20-year-old Soviet soldier from a base in Elstal, west of Berlin, had decided to cool off by taking his ACRV M-1974 artillery-command and reconnaissance vehicle for a spin. About 16 miles down the road, he rumbled into what was formerly West Berlin and headed down the fashionable Kurfurstendamm, hitting several cars -- though no people. As the soldier was attempting to return to his garrison, a Soviet sergeant stopped him with a distinctly low-tech ploy: he hopped onto the carrier and threw a blanket over the vehicle's windshield.