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- <text id=91TT2824>
- <title>
- Dec. 23, 1991: World Notes:Fugitives
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Dec. 23, 1991 Gorbachev:A Man Without A Country
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 31
- World Notes
- FUGITIVES
- Where Next? Chechen?
- </hdr><body>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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.
- </p>
- <p> 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."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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