Word: bonneli
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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...
...Union was the main factor behind the decision. Suspense had been building for weeks about the East German leader's visit. The Soviet Union had made clear, in a virulent propaganda campaign against the West Germans, that Honecker ought to think twice about seeking to improve relations with Bonn. The shrill tone of the attacks left no doubt that Moscow expected East Berlin to support to the full the Soviet hard line against the deployment of new U.S.-built missiles in Western Europe...
...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...
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...