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- WORLD, Page 31World NotesFUGITIVESWhere Next? Chechen?
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- Where is a failed communist to go these days? Ousted East
- German leader Erich Honecker thought he had found a safe haven
- in the Soviet Union. But last week Russian President Boris
- Yeltsin said Honecker, 79, had to leave.
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- The East German quickly found a friend: Clodomiro Almeyda,
- the Chilean ambassador to Moscow, who had been given refuge in
- East Germany following the bloody 1973 coup in Chile. Almeyda
- invited Honecker to stay in his embassy while he asked his
- government to give Honecker asylum. Then came Santiago's
- response: no.
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- The German government has formally requested Ho necker's
- return, but if truth be told, the Germans hope he will not come.
- A trial would give Honecker a chance to claim political
- persecution, and he could prove an embarrassment.
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- At week's end the East German still had two options: North
- Korea offered temporary refuge, while permanent sanctuary was
- held out by Dzhokhar Dudayev, the President of the tiny,
- self-proclaimed Chechen republic (which broke away from Russia's
- Chechen-Ingush region). A staunch anticommunist, Dudayev said
- he offered his hospitality "to save the honor of both Gorbachev
- and Yeltsin."
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