Word: brandts
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...quaffing a friendly beer together in the Bundestag cafeteria? They were, as it happened, none other than West Germany's two foremost political rivals. Only the week before, Opposition Leader Rainer Barzel had tried and failed by a bare margin of two votes to overthrow Chancellor Willy Brandt. But over beer and in countless hurried conferences, the two men were seeking to find a mutual way out of a severe parliamentary crisis that threatened to have grave repercussions far beyond the borders of the Federal Republic...
...crisis centered on the treaties of Moscow and Warsaw, which Brandt negotiated in 1970 as part of his famed Ostpolitik. The treaties have become keystones to further progress in East-West detente; other major diplomatic initiatives, including the Big Four agreement that seeks to eliminate Berlin as a source of cold war tensions, will go into effect only after the ratification of those two pacts...
Soviet Word. Brandt had originally intended to submit the treaties to the Bundestag for ratification last week. But in the wake of the narrowly won no-confidence test and a subsequent tie vote in the Bundestag on a budget appropriation, he feared that the coalition of his Social Democratic Party and the Free Democrats would no longer command the necessary majority to pass the treaties. Rather than risk a defeat, Brandt postponed balloting for one week so that he and Christian Democrat Leader Barzel could have an opportunity to work out a solution...
...Christian Democrats are in a quandary. They are publicly opposed to the treaties, but do not want the responsibility of rejecting them. They know that they would then be regarded both in East and West as unreliable partners in the search for detente. In their meetings, Barzel and Brandt sought a compromise in a joint declaration that would overcome the reservations of the Christian Democratic Union. Among other things, the declaration would state that the treaties -which recognize the Communist seizure of former German lands after World War II-do not preclude the eventual reunification of Germany and the right...
...Bundestag began its debate on Brandt's request for a record $35 billion budget for 1973, the C.D.U. introduced a "constructive vote" of no confidence, a parliamentary procedure that is unique to West Germany. Mindful of the governmental instability during the Weimar Republic, the framers of West Germany's postwar constitution had provided constructively that a Chancellor could only be ousted by a secret vote that installs...