BERLIN. Nov 10! The fifth anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fall was marred by clashes between police and leftists, who threw’ eggs and paint bombs at the mayor Wednesday as* he reopened a bridge linking east and west, reports AP.

Angry at the additional traffic the bridge will bring, the demonstrators shouted down Mayor Eberhard Diepgen as he cut a ribbon across the Oberbaum Bridge protected by shield-toting police.

A green paint bomb hit Dlepgen's shoulder. Some of the 900 police deployed at the bridge arrested at least 20 protesters, and clubbed and arrested at least a dozen others when they tried to enter the bridge Wednesday . night.

The ceremony was. pianaed to symbolise the building of bridges among Germans, but residents of the western Kreuzberg and eastern Fried-• richshain districts were angry that a subway line won't cross the bridge until 1996.

"The opening of the bridge for auto traffic will destroy the quality of life here." -complained Martin Paesslef. an east Berliner.

There was no official celebration of the 1989 fall of the wall. Signs of the wall are now hard to find In Berlin, where city authorities have done little to mark the old east-west boundaries.

Fewer than a dozen people attended a wreath-laying ceremony Wednesday morning outside the Reichstag parliament building memorialising

tlie more ' than 370 East Germans killed trying to flee to the west.

About 100 people marched with candles across the Born-holmerstrasse Bridge, where East Berliners stormed into the west five years ago.

"It was such a joy. and it’s a shame now that people seem to have forgotten that happiness." said Sylvia Prantz. 51. "The Wall was here — you couldn't forget It. But now it's gone and "people have forgotten."

Polls show - a majority of Germans are happy with unification. but there is little euphoria left. Unity meant higher taxes for west Germans and left many east Germans overwhelmed by their absorption into the capitalist world.