Word: bundestag
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...purpose of the Nuremberg exercise, according to Petra Kelly,* 35, a founder of the Greens and a candidate for the West German Bundestag, was to indict "the world's five nuclear-weapons states, but mainly the U.S. and Russia." Said she: "What we are trying to do is to show that the very possession of nuclear weapons is a crime of immense proportions...
...West Germany entered the final, decisive weeks before its March 6 national elections, each of those disparate rallies had its own significance. At stake was control of the 519-seat Bundestag, a struggle dominated by the rivalry between Kohl's Christian Democrats and Vogel's Social Democrats. But for the first time, a powerful environmental and antinuclear movement, headed by the Greens, is threatening to take over the balance of electoral power in West Germany. That far from remote possibility would challenge the concept of nuclear deterrence within the NATO alliance, and would undermine a strategy that...
...Free Democratic Party, which precipitated the change in government last October by shifting its allegiance from Schmidt's Social Democrats to Kohl's Christian Democrats, is given 4%. Unless sentiments change, however, the Greens may win 5%, thereby breaking the barrier necessary for representation in the Bundestag. If that happens, the protest movement will be the first left-wing fringe party in the postwar period to have a say in West German government...
What both major parties fear specifically is that the Greens might oust the Free Democratic Party as the pivotal third force in the Bundestag. That will not matter if either Kohl's Christian Democratic/Christian Social Union alliance or Vogel's Social Democrats win a majority. But it becomes a critical issue if neither party has enough strength to form a government on its own. The conservatives are not likely, under any circumstances, to make common cause with the Greens. The Greens have signaled that they could support a Social Democratic minority government on some issues, but in return...
...defeated Schmidt, whose term of office ended when the small, centrist Free Democratic Party deserted his coalition to join Kohl's conservative alignment. Then Kohl faced a voter backlash for the way he arranged the election call, by stage-managing a vote of confidence against himself in the Bundestag. That maneuver has been contested by four Bundestag members before West Germany's Constitutional Court...