Word: germane
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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There, with only three aides present, an extraordinary confrontation took place. For eight hours, Brandt, the author of West Germany's policy of conciliation toward Eastern Europe, talked with the U.S.S.R.'s ranking authority on German problems, Pyotr Abrasimov, the Russian Ambassador to East Germany and a member of the Communist Party Central Committee...
First over coffee, then at supper on the terrace, and later over Russian cognac, Brandt tried to impress on his Soviet host the fact that, as he put it, "the East German measures are damaging and place a burden on efforts to reach a detente." Despite the good personal relations between the two men (they met five times while Brandt was still West Berlin's mayor), it was a tough session. Though he issued no blustery warnings, Brandt made it clear that Bonn would not allow itself to be provoked into abandoning its policy of improving relations with...
...cool ploy, Brandt openly mused whether the East German moves were indeed serving the best interests of the Soviet Union. He explained that Ulbricht's aggressive actions only encouraged the rise of right-wing extremism in West Germany and strengthened the obduracy of conservative elements that oppose West German ratification of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which Russia and the U.S. jointly sponsor...
...part, Ambassador Abrasimov went out of his way to emphasize that he saw nothing approaching a Berlin crisis, evidently convinced Brandt that the Soviets did not have another East-West confrontation in mind. He downgraded the East German travel restrictions as formalities that were fully within East Germany's rights, but denied that they were the result of Soviet-East German consultations. If Bonn did not like the new measures, Abrasimov archly suggested, the simplest way to resolve the situation was for it to recognize the East German government as an independent sovereign state and to establish normal diplomatic...
...Europe, they also favor diplomatic recognition of East Germany in hopes that even a slight reduction in tensions there might help to create a situation in which the 74-year-old Ulbricht's successor, or perhaps his successor's successor, might turn out to be an East German Alexander...