Stasi archive model for exorcising ghosts of old regimes

A dreary building in a rundown part of Berlin is proving a popular attraction for experts hoping to uncover the secrets of the world's dictators, military juntas and totalitarian regimes.

Once home to East Germany's feared Ministry for State Security, the complex in the city's Lichtenberg district now holds an extensive archive containing the files of the secret police, known as the Stasi.

Although set up to help Germans deal with the collapsed communist country's legacy of oppression, the archive has also become a model for several nations trying to sift through similarly troubled pasts.

'We've had visitors from Iraq and from as far away as Argentina and South Africa, not to mention our long-standing contacts with Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe,' said Christian Booss, the archive's spokesman.

'Germany has definitely set the standard of how to go about such things.'

But it is not just the millions of efficiently categorised and preserved documents that have so impressed experts tracing the paper trail left by Saddam Hussein's regime or Argentina's junta from the 1970s. Many also come to Berlin to study the archive's legal framework, which regulates access to the files and is widely regarded as having struck the right balance between transparency and privacy.