Word: bundestag
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...time limit on ratification by the Bundestag. If the treaties of Moscow and Warsaw remain unratified for more than a few months, however, Bonn's relations with the Soviets and Poles are bound to deteriorate. Soviet diplomats have privately warned that Moscow will "punish" the West Germans if they do not follow through on the treaty. By punish, the Russians most probably mean that they would put the old German card back into play to block Bonn's overtures to other East bloc countries. But Brandt is hoping that the Soviet impulse will be offset by Moscow's hunger...
...between West Germany and Eastern Europe is blocked by an issue completely separate from the treaty: an agreement on the Berlin problem. Brandt is not expected to submit the Polish treaty or West Germany's four-month-old renunciation-of-force agreement with the Soviet Union to the Bundestag for ratification until the Berlin problem is solved. But there was growing worry, especially in Washington, that Brandt might have committed a tactical error in agreeing to the two treaties before Berlin's status was resolved...
...Moscow is indeed relying on a strategy of delay, its planning could be foiled on two counts. First, the Bundestag would be loath to ratify either treaty if it were submitted before West Berlin's future is more assured. Second, with the recent electoral successes of his Free Democrat coalition partners, Brandt himself has grown more confident about the strength of his government. As a result, he feels less pressure to submit the treaties for ratification before he gets measurable progress on West Berlin. In the end, Brandt feels, it is the Soviets, not he, who will have...
...somewhat less. Nonetheless the Russian stance posed a threat to Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, which rests on the assumption that the Soviets are willing to make at least limited accommodations in central Europe. Brandt has vowed that he will not submit the Treaty of Moscow to the Bundestag for ratification until there is substantial progress on Berlin, and he has urged Britain, France and the U.S. to press for a quick agreement in principle with the Soviets on the city. The fine points, Brandt's aides said, could be negotiated later. One reason for haste is that...
Some observers feared that the whole fabric of Ostpolitik could be rent by the fall of Brandt's tiny coalition partner, the Free Democratic Party, whose 30 members give him a bare twelve-seat majority in the 496-seat Bundestag. A defeat of the Free Democrats in the state elections in Hesse and Bavaria in November could result in a coalition crisis that could end the Brandt government as presently constituted. Even so, Brandt's foreign policy seems to enjoy solid support among a large majority of West Germans, who grew weary of the cold-war posturing...