TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/021990/0219008.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7.1 KB | 146 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 39

"A Great Day for Germany"


But Moscow's long memory remains the biggest obstacle in the way
of unification

By BRUCE W. NELAN -- Reported by Paul Hofheinz/Moscow and James
O. Jackson/Bonn


    If it's not one problem, it's another. After surrendering
his party's monopoly on power last week, Mikhail Gorbachev
turned his attention to a separate issue that he and his
countrymen find painful: the incipient unification of Germany.
On Saturday West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl arrived in
Moscow for two hours of talks with the Soviet President.
Emerging from their meeting, Kohl declared that Gorbachev had
promised to respect a united Germany. Kohl and his Foreign
Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, said a plan for unification,
in concert with France, Britain, the U.S. and the Soviet Union,
would be ready by this year. It was, Kohl said, "a great day
for Germany."

    During the weeks that Soviet leaders have been preoccupied
with remaking their party and government, the pressure for
unity inside the two Germanys has mounted faster than was
predicted even in this age of sudden European transformations.
In Bonn last week, Kohl won his coalition government's approval
for talks with East Berlin on a monetary union that would make
the deutsche mark the currency in both Germanys. He also set
up a Cabinet-level committee to devise specific plans and
legislation for political unification. Discussions on the merger
would begin with the new East German government to be elected
on March 18.

    Even the caretaker Communist-led government in East Berlin,
which previously argued for a separate socialist existence in
some kind of confederal relationship, has thrown in its hand.
Unification is possible, Prime Minister Hans Modrow says, but
only if the newly formed state remains neutral, unaffiliated
with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. Bonn and its allies reject
that idea but counter with one presented by Genscher. A unified
Germany should remain in NATO, he proposed, but allied troops
or military structures should stay out of the areas that are
now East Germany. In Moscow for his own set of talks, U.S.
Secretary of State James Baker hinted that Washington may be
flexible on a united Germany's status within NATO, but he said,
"Who knows how all this will turn out?" Last week the Soviet
Union refused to accept Genscher's formulation.

    None of Germany's neighbors have been cheering the prospect
of its rebirth as the largest European state and economy west
of the U.S.S.R. The Soviets, with their carefully nurtured
memories of World War II, have been the most negative of all.
Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze has referred to "the
revival of sinister shadows of the past" and said the world
needs guarantees that the danger of war will never again arise
in Germany. The Soviet Union's own borders will have to be
firmly secured, Politburo member Alexander Yakovlev insisted
last week, reflecting Soviet irritation at Kohl for refusing to
renounce claims to prewar territories now incorporated into
Poland. "We are in favor of a European Germany," Yakovlev said,
"not a German Europe."

    Kohl's mission to Moscow, arranged at his urgent request,
was one of reassurance. "To those who say the Germans want to
create a Fourth Reich," he said before his departure, "there
are two clear answers. First, after 40 years we have proved
ourselves to be serious and reliable partners in Europe, and
second, we are a country that is prepared to strengthen the
European Parliament." He carried to Gorbachev a promise that
Bonn would take Soviet security interests into account and his
assurance that he still favored a step-by-step plan for
unification. He built his case on the argument that his unity
proposal would prevent regional instability by providing
"economic reconstruction" for a pauperized East Germany.

    One of the forces driving the rush toward unification is
apprehension. Many of the 16 million East Germans fear that
unity will be delayed, that West Germany's generous benefits
for arrivals from the East will be cut, that their own economy
will implode. So they flee in vast numbers to the West: 344,000
last year, an additional 58,000 last month, almost 2,000 every
day.

    Most of those leaving now are the young and people with
skills to offer in the West's job market. Their departure
further slows production in East German factories and cripples
social services, increasing the pressure on others to follow
them. As its population flows west, the East's economic crisis
has deepened to the point that simple absorption seems as
likely as formal unification. Kohl's call for monetary unity
could cause a host of technical problems, but he made it for
political reasons -- to prop up the East and give its people
enough hope for the future to keep them at home.

    Next month's election could slow the westward movement if
a strong, unity-oriented noncommunist government emerges. With
that in mind, West German parties have taken to the campaign
trail and are boosting their East German offshoots with funds,
equipment and advice. Kohl's Christian Democratic Union is
backing a coalition of three center-right parties. He and 50
other CDU politicians will attend rallies in East Berlin,
Magdeburg, Leipzig and other cities. The West's Social
Democratic Party has been supporting its Eastern counterpart,
with former Chancellor Willy Brandt, the Nobel laureate who
invented the conciliatory policy of Ostpolitik, drawing
hundreds of thousands of East Germans to hear his speeches.

    An opinion poll released last week indicated that the East's
SPD, with unification at the top of its platform, was favored
by 38% of eligible voters. Second, at a minuscule 7%, is the
Party of Democratic Socialism, the former Communists. The East
German CDU, one of the three parties backed by Kohl's party,
attracted only 5%. Other samplings indicate that some 76% of
East Germans favor unification.

    No matter how much Germans support a merger, Bonn officials
fear that the Soviet Union, with 390,000 troops based on East
German soil, could prevent it. SPD strategist Egon Bahr
suggests that Mod row's call for neutrality may be worth
looking at. If the Warsaw Pact dissolves quickly and if NATO
becomes a political grouping, Bahr argues, neutrality would
lose its meaning in "a Europe free of alliances," where "there
would be nobody to be neutral against." Most Germans, however,
resist the idea of loosening ties with the West and doubt the
feasibility of neutralizing such a large state.

    Moscow still stands behind Modrow's demand for neutrality,
but it also wants to reconvene the 35-nation Helsinki
Conference this year to produce a treaty that would legally end
World War II and guarantee all existing European frontiers.
Washington now seems ready to go along. If such a conference
is held, it might create a Europe in which there is technically
no one to be neutral -- or belligerent -- against. But the
Soviets will need more than a one-day visit and soothing words
from Helmut Kohl to be convinced of that.