He Avoids Making Issue of Spy Scandal in Bonn : Brandt Urges Harmony in Talks With East

Chairman Willy Brandt of the opposition Social Democratic Party, making his first trip to East Berlin since he resigned as West Germany’s chancellor in 1974, went out of his way Thursday to avoid making an issue of West Germany’s unfolding spy scandal.

At a luncheon given in his honor by East German leader Erich Honecker, Brandt said the two Germanys could work together to end confrontation between the West’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the East Bloc’s Warsaw Pact.

“Both states, loyal to their alliances, which will exist for the foreseeable future, should see a common duty,” Brandt declared. “They should use the chances presented by their proximity (to each other) to make a contribution to replacing the present fruitless confrontation of those alliances by a partnership of security.”

Brandt is making a three-day visit to East Berlin, and his speech was one of the strongest expressions by a West German political leader since the spy scandal erupted last month of the need to maintain good relations between the two Germanys despite the unmasking of key Bonn government people as East German spies.

Aide Was a Spy

Brandt himself resigned as chancellor 11 years ago when a close personal aide, Guenter Guillaume, was uncovered as a veteran spy for East German intelligence.

The high-level reception accorded Brandt in East Berlin, where the Communist press stressed the importance of his visit with front-page pictures and reports, underscored East Germany’s interest in cementing ties with West Germany, which have been improving in recent months.

Brandt is the titular leader of the opposition Social Democrats. But rightist leader Franz Josef Strauss of the Christian Social Union, the main coalition partner of Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democratic administration, also played down the espionage scandal when he visited the Leipzig Trade Fair last month.

Meanwhile, Kohl faces more harsh criticism and perhaps a crisis in the Bundestag (Parliament) over the defection of a secretary in his office. It was disclosed that he turned down a counterintelligence service request that she be put under close surveillance.

The Social Democrats repeated their demands for the resignation of Interior Minister Friedrich Zimmermann, whose department is responsible for the country’s internal security. Zimmermann attended a meeting with Kohl at which possible surveillance of the secretary, Herta-Astrid Willner, was discussed.

West German editorial writers were also calling Thursday for Zimmermann’s resignation, saying that he failed to impress upon Kohl the seriousness of the counterintelligence agency’s suspicions about Willner and her husband, Herbert, a defense analyst for a Social Democratic research institute, who defected with his wife.

Willfried Penner, deputy leader of the Social Democrats in the Bundestag, said the party would demand a full parliamentary inquiry into the espionage scandal, the major elements of which have included, in addition to the arrest or defection of key secretaries, the defection of a senior section chief in the counterintelligence service.

“We need a completely new beginning,” Penner said. “This requires new leadership in the Interior Ministry, and that means the resignation of Minister Zimmermann.”

Zimmermann, however, is a friend and close political associate of Strauss, and any serious confrontation between Kohl and Strauss could put the governing coalition in jeopardy and open the way for a return to power by the Social Democrats in the next national election, scheduled for 1987.

Meantime, Social Democratic sources said that Brandt, a former West Berlin mayor, hopes to visit Eastern Europe this fall to explore the outlook for East-West detente.

While serving as chancellor, Brandt was credited with improving West Germany’s relations with East Germany and other Communist countries with his Ostpolitik policy, which led to his winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971. He was also named Thursday as the winner of the 1985 Einstein Peace Prize.