Word: modrow
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Kohl aroused similar anxieties two weeks ago when he snubbed East German Prime Minister Hans Modrow during a visit to Bonn. Kohl high-handedly announced that his government would hold back a $9 billion package of aid to East Germany until after the March 18 elections. In a speech to the East German parliament, an embittered Modrow declared that his country "will not enter a unified Germany as a beggar or wearing a hair shirt...
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev began the year opposed to German unification but unexpectedly backed East German Prime Minister Hans Modrow's proposal earlier this month for a united, neutral country. Gorbachev then agreed with visiting West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl that unification is something for the Germans to work out among themselves, and he seemed to waver even on the principle of neutrality. Two weeks ago, Kohl proposed a monetary union with East Germany. By last week that suggestion had already become official policy on both sides of what used to be the Berlin Wall...
Even the caretaker Communist-led government in East Berlin, which previously argued for a separate socialist existence in some kind of confederal relationship, has thrown in its hand. Unification is possible, Prime Minister Hans Modrow says, but only if the newly formed state remains neutral, unaffiliated with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. Bonn and its allies reject that idea but counter with one presented by Genscher. A unified Germany should remain in NATO, he proposed, but allied troops or military structures should stay out of the areas that are now East Germany. In Moscow...
Moscow still stands behind Modrow's demand for neutrality, but it also wants to reconvene the 35-nation Helsinki Conference this year to produce a treaty that would legally end World War II and guarantee all existing European frontiers. Washington now seems ready to go along. If such a conference is held, it might create a Europe in which there is technically no one to be neutral -- or belligerent -- against. But the Soviets will need more than a one-day visit and soothing words from Helmut Kohl to be convinced of that...
Kohl welcomed Modrow's proposal, but he dismissed any prospect of a West German withdrawal from NATO. Perhaps in an attempt to downplay Modrow and his pitch for neutrality, Kohl said he will not discuss unification with East Berlin until after East Germans go to the polls in mid-March. But unification has emerged as the primary campaign issue in both East Germany and West Germany, which will hold its national elections in December. Already Kohl and his fellow politicians are seeking out like-minded brethren on the other side of the border, funneling campaign money and building alliances that...