West Germans Monitor Foreigner Refugee Flow

West German officials Sunday began monitoring closely the level of non-German refugees coming across their frontier from East Germany after the East German government announced Saturday that it has begun to curtail the flow of foreigners seeking asylum in the West.

The announcement said that in return for trade credits, East Germany had accepted a request by Bonn that it not give transit visas to refugees unless they already have West German visas.

“The (East) German Democratic Republic acceded to this request and will proceed accordingly from Feb. 1, 1986,” according to a report by ADN, the official East German news agency.

A record 75,000 non-German refugees entered West Germany through East Germany last year, putting burdens on social welfare services in West Germany and in West Berlin. West German officials said that East Germany had encouraged this flow because its airline, Interflug, offered inexpensive air fares to refugees from several Middle Eastern countries and from Sri Lanka to East Berlin’s airport at Schoenefeld.

The airline profited, officials charged, while the refugees crossed into West Germany at no significant cost to the East Germans.

West Germany has a policy of accepting political refugees seeking asylum, and no border controls are maintained by West Berlin because it maintains that the city must be considered a single community until a formal peace treaty is signed that would define Berlin’s post-World War II status.

However, the East Germans specifically exempted West Berlin in its Saturday announcement, saying that “Berlin (West) is not a part of the Federal Republic of (West) Germany and is not ruled by it.”

About 20,000 of the foreign refugees entering West Germany last year came through the Berlin Wall to West Berlin, authorities said, which caused tensions between the two parts of the divided city.

Commenting on the East German announcement, a West Berlin official said: “The decisive factor is how the ruling is enforced in practice. We are watching it with interest.”