Word: brandts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
West Germany's Ostpolitik, carped Radio Moscow, "has become lost in a fog of uncertainty." As if to prove that he really is determined to establish better relations with his Communist neighbors to the east, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt last week dispatched his chief foreign policy adviser, Egon Bahr, on an urgent mission to Moscow. And what happened? Bahr's plane was fogbound at the Cologne/Bonn airport. After a short delay, however, Bahr finally arrived in Moscow and spent six hours conferring with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. There was no indication whether the talks, which resume...
Bahr's assignment caught just about everyone by surprise. Brandt decided to use the dramatic gesture as a litmus of Soviet intentions. In three sessions last month with West German Ambassador Helmut Allardt, Gromyko set forth hard conditions, including Bonn's recognition of East Germany, before Moscow would consider signing a renunciation-of-force treaty with West Germany...
Bahr's assignment was to determine whether the Soviets were only stringing the West Germans along. Brandt would like to start Soviet talks as soon as possible in hopes that Moscow's example would induce East Germany's Walter Ulbricht to follow suit. He would also like to have at least one other set of East bloc talks running so that the Poles, who start negotiations with the West Germans in Warsaw this week, will not feel isolated...
Bahr, who is one of three state secretaries in the chancellery, is Brandt's Henry Kissinger. A former journalist who became Brandt's press spokesman and confidant during the Chancellor's days as mayor of West Berlin, Bahr is an originator and still a fervent advocate of the Ostpolitik. Some West German politicians regard him as naive about the Soviets. Brandt is aware of these misgivings but apparently felt that Moscow might ease its tough line a bit when confronted with Bonn's most vocal exponent of better relations...
Pressure for Results. As soon as press reports of Ulbricht's statements clattered onto the Teletype in Palais Schaumberg, Brandt and a handful of key aides began to draft a reply. It came in the form of a letter from Brandt to East German Premier Willi Stoph. In his low-keyed four-paragraph note, Brandt wrote that the two Germanys should sit down at the negotiating table, in the first high-level meeting since the rival states were created 21 years ago, to discuss a renunciation-of-force agreement. In Brandt's words, the meeting could lead...