Soviet Disaster Bolsters Anti-Nuclear Demonstrations in W. Germany, Rome

Anti-nuclear demonstrators staged protests across West Germany on Saturday, their ranks bolstered by outrage over the disaster at the Chernobyl atomic power plant in the Soviet Union.

In Rome, more than 100,000 protesters marched through the central city section calling for a halt in nuclear power plant construction. Marchers laid a wreath at the heavily guarded Soviet Embassy with the inscription “For the past and future victims” of the Chernobyl disaster.

West German police arrested 11 people who tried to block a railway line close to the Gorleben nuclear waste dump near the East German border, the scene of frequent anti-nuclear rallies.

A police spokesman said the protesters had removed ballast from the railway track and felled telephone poles in an attempt to stop trains carrying nuclear waste to the plant.

The spokesman said there had been clashes during the night with demonstrators who tried to tear down fencing around the plant and set a road barricade on fire.

In Munich, about 15,000 people attended an anti-nuclear demonstration called by the ecological Greens party to protest against the construction of a nuclear waste reprocessing plant at the Bavarian village of Wackersdorf.

The protesters carried banners which read “Wackersdorf atom bomb factory” and “Turn Chernobyl into a holiday village for (President) Reagan, (West German Chancellor Helmut) Kohl and (Soviet leader Mikhail S.) Gorbachev.”