The Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany, German: Vertrag über die abschließende Regelung in bezug auf Deutschland (or the Two Plus Four Agreement, German: Zwei-plus-Vier-Vertrag; short: German Treaty) was negotiated in 1990 between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic (the titular "Two"), and the Four Powers which occupied Germany at the end of World War II in Europe: France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.

On 2 August 1945, the Potsdam Agreement was issued at the end of the Potsdam Conference. Among other things, it agreed on the initial terms under which the Allies of World War II would govern Germany and the provisional German-Polish border known as the Oder-Neisse line. The agreements reached were provisional ones that would be finalised by "a peace settlement for Germany to be accepted by the Government of Germany when a government adequate for the purpose is established" (Potsdam Agreement 1.3.1). The "German Question" became one of the salient and crucial issues of the long-running Cold War, and until it ended in the late 1980s, little progress had been made in the establishment of a single government of Germany adequate for the purpose of agreeing to a final settlement. This meant that in some respects (largely but not only technical), Germany did not have full national sovereignty.

Germany (ⁱ/ˈdʒɜrməni/), officially the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland, pronounced [ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant] ( listen)), is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km² and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With 81.8 million inhabitants, it is the most populous member state and the largest economy in the European Union. It is one of the major political powers of the European continent and a technological leader in many fields.

A region named Germania, inhabited by several Germanic peoples, was documented before AD 100. During the Migration Period, the Germanic tribes expanded southward, and established successor kingdoms throughout much of Europe. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation while southern and western parts remained dominated by Roman Catholic denominations, with the two factions clashing in the Thirty Years' War, marking the beginning of the Catholic–Protestant divide that has characterized German society ever since. Occupied during the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of Pan-Germanism inside the German Confederation resulted in the unification of most of the German states into the German Empire in 1871 which was Prussian dominated. After the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the subsequent military surrender in World War I, the Empire was replaced by the Weimar Republic in 1918, and partitioned in the Treaty of Versailles. Amidst the Great Depression, the Third Reich was proclaimed in 1933. The latter period was marked by Fascism and World War II. After 1945, Germany was divided by allied occupation, and evolved into two states, East Germany and West Germany. In 1990 Germany was reunified.

Douglas Richard Hurd, Baron Hurd of Westwell, CH, CBE, PC (born 8 March 1930), is a British Conservative politician and novelist, who served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major between 1979 and his retirement in 1995.

Born in Marlborough, Wiltshire, Hurd first entered parliament in February 1974, as MP for the Mid Oxfordshire constituency (Witney from 1983). His first government post was as Minister for Europe, from 1979-83 (being the post's inaugural holder), and served in several cabinet posts from 1984 onwards, including Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (1984–85), Home Secretary (1985–89) and Foreign Secretary (1989–95). He stood unsuccessfully for the Conservative Party leadership in 1990, but retired from frontline politics during a cabinet re-shuffle in 1995.

In 1997, Hurd entered the House of Lords. Viewed as one of the Conservative Party's senior elder statesmen, he is a patron of the Tory Reform Group, and remains an active figure in public life.

Douglas Hurd was born in Marlborough, Wiltshire, England, in 1930. His father Anthony Hurd (later Baron Hurd) and grandfather Sir Percy Hurd had both been Members of Parliament. Hurd attended Twyford School and Eton College. He then went on to Cambridge University, where he earned a first class degree in History at Trinity College and served as the President of the Cambridge Union Society.

[1] Lakhdar Brahimi (Arabic: الأخضر الإبراهيمي‎, al-Akhḍar al-Ibrāhīmī) (born January 1, 1934 in Algeria) is a veteran United Nations envoy and advisor. He retired from his duties at the end of 2005. Brahimi is a member of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, the first global initiative to focus specifically on the link between exclusion, poverty and law. He is also a member of the Global Leadership Foundation, an organization which works to promote good governance around the world.[2]. Mr. Brahimi is currently a distinguished senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics and Political Science. [3] and a governing board member of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

He was the United Nations special representative for Afghanistan and Iraq. Before his appointment in 2001 by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he had served the U.N. as special representative to Haiti and to South Africa. Before coming to the U.N., Brahimi, who represented the National Liberation Front in Jakarta during Algeria's 1956–1961 independence movement, was an Arab League official (1984–1991) and the Algerian Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1991 until 1993. Mr. Brahimi was educated in Algeria and France (law and political science), and is fluent in Arabic, English and French. Brahimi is married with three children. His daughter, Reem (also spelled Rym), who was a CNN Correspondent in Baghdad during the 2003 Iraq War, is married to Prince Ali of Jordan. Lakhdar Brahimi was also chair of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, which produced the influential Brahimi Report [4].