Word: bonne
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...East German delegation arrived punctually at the Chancellery offices in Bonn last Tuesday morning to negotiate final details of the visit to West Germany by East German Communist Party Leader Erich Honecker. At similar regular sessions during the past three months, the four East German envoys and their West German counterparts had agreed that Honecker would meet with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at a health spa hotel. They had even decided that the Wiebelskirchen musical corps would serenade the East German leader at his birthplace in the Saarland. With the visit less than a month away, they had come...
Just as the negotiations were about to begin, Philipp Jenninger, the head of the West German delegation, asked East Berlin's envoy to Bonn, Ewald Moldt, to step into his office for a private chat. Jenninger asked the East German if rumors that Honecker might not be coming to West Germany on Sept. 26 were true. Replied Moldt awkwardly: "The timing of the visit is no longer realistic." Thus came the earliest official word that the first visit by an East German Communist Party leader to West Germany had been postponed−perhaps indefinitely...
...World War II boundaries, describing the country as virtually a reborn Third Reich that is preparing to launch another blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union. Despite an improving relationship between East and West Germany this year, Honecker may decide not to brave such Soviet opposition. Indeed, when officials in Bonn and East Berlin conferred to settle details of the trip, the East Germans withheld official notification that it would take place...
...thrusting and parrying in print began when Pravda harshly criticized a West German decision to lend $330 million to ease East Germany's pressing foreign debt. At the same time, East Germany had agreed to lift some travel restrictions between the two countries. The Soviet commentary accused Bonn of using "economic levers and political contacts" to "impose its dominance and encourage a chauvinistic spirit" in East Germany. The East German Communist party daily Neues Deutschland called attention to the criticism by publishing the full text of the Pravda article. Two days later, the East German paper countered by reprinting...
West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl last week dismissed the Soviet campaign as "completely absurd defamation." Officials in Bonn say the blasts from Moscow will in no way affect the Honecker visit. The Soviet attacks may reflect the Kremlin's desire, as a Soviet official put it to a West German diplomat in Moscow recently, "to treat the West Germans the same way we treat the Americans." But they also give voice to deep-rooted fears that Germany will one day be reunited and become hostile to the Soviet Union. Said a Western diplomat: "They are putting down a marker...