Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's chances of winning the Nobel Peace Prize got a boost on Tuesday with former leader of the Soviet Union and Nobel laureate Mikhail Gorbachev having interceded on his behalf.

In a letter to the Nobel Prize committee in Oslo obtained by the German tabloid Bild, Gorbachev wrote that, as the 1990 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, he wanted "to recommend the honorary citizen of Europe and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl for the award." He justified his recommendation by saying that Kohl had "played a key role in the peaceful shaping of epochal events." Kohl's efforts on behalf of European integration have contributed to the healing of "the scars which World War II left in the hearts of our peoples," Gorbachev wrote.

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso nominated Helmut Kohl for the Nobel Peace Prize in a letter to the Oslo committee in April -- a move that incidentally met with a cool response from Kohl's former protegé and current German chancellor Angela Merkel .

As the last chancellor of West Germany, Kohl engineered German reunification after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, with Gorbachev's help. The two leaders, who are also old friends, were honored with the German Point Alpha Prize in 2005 for their efforts in ending the Cold War.

Coincidentally, Tuesday also marked the 20th anniversary of former US President Ronald Reagan's June 12, 1987 speech in front of the Berlin Wall, where he famously said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Günter Schabowski, the East German official who famously announced the opening of the Wall prematurely to a group of foreign journalists, went on German radio on Tuesday to recall Reagan's speech. He called it "the absurd demonstration of a Cold Warrior."