Those "Fraternal Socialist Kisses"

They weren't very pleasant, according to Poland's last Commie leader, General Wojciech Jaruzelski.

"I exchanged many embraces with [East German Communist leader Erich] Honecker. He had this disgusting way of kissing," Jaruzelski, who was prime minister of Poland from 1981 to 1985 and president from 1985 to 1990, was quoted as saying. Honecker, who ruled East Germany from 1971 to 1989, died in 1994.

Reprints of photographs showing grey-haired, bespectacled Honecker kissing cheeks with Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev or Mikhail Gorbachev are part of the popular culture in Germany.

Artist Dmitri Vrubel's picture of Honecker and Brezhnev kissing each other on the lips, painted on a section of the Berlin Wall, is one of Berlin's most popular tourist attractions.

Maybe President Bush holding hands with a Saudi prince wasn't quite so odd, after all.