Word: abrasimov
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Dates: during 1968-1968
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There, with only three aides present, an extraordinary confrontation took place. For eight hours, Brandt, the author of West Germany's policy of conciliation toward Eastern Europe, talked with the U.S.S.R.'s ranking authority on German problems, Pyotr Abrasimov, the Russian Ambassador to East Germany and a member of the Communist Party Central Committee...
...part, Ambassador Abrasimov went out of his way to emphasize that he saw nothing approaching a Berlin crisis, evidently convinced Brandt that the Soviets did not have another East-West confrontation in mind. He downgraded the East German travel restrictions as formalities that were fully within East Germany's rights, but denied that they were the result of Soviet-East German consultations. If Bonn did not like the new measures, Abrasimov archly suggested, the simplest way to resolve the situation was for it to recognize the East German government as an independent sovereign state and to establish normal diplomatic...
...Abrasimov's warning underlined the dilemma into which the Berlin affair has plunged the Osi-politik of the Grand Coalition. When he started the new policy 18 months ago, Brandt sought to establish diplomatic relations with all 'Eastern European countries except East Germany. Under pressure from Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger's Christian Democrats and from moderates in his own Socialist party, Brandt retained the Federal Republic's old insistence that it, and not Ulbricht's regime, is the legitimate representative of all Germans, including those in East Germany...