Ban All W. German Nuclear Plants, Greens Say

The radical Greens party voted Monday for a party platform making the abolition of nuclear power in West Germany the No. 1 priority in the coming national political campaign.

At a four-day congress in Hanover, the Greens called for the immediate shutdown of all 19 of the country’s nuclear power plants and demanded that the opposition Social Democratic Party issue a similar call.

Earlier, in another controversial action, the environmental party adopted a policy insisting on West Germany’s withdrawal from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the removal of all foreign troops stationed in the country, along with their weapons.

In the wake of the catastrophic accident at the Soviet nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, the Greens are riding a wave of public support for their anti-nuclear program.

Public opinion polls show a marked increase in support for the party since the April 26 accident in the Ukraine, and commentators here have suggested that the Greens might eventually hold the balance of power in next month’s important election in the north German state of Lower Saxony.

The state is currently governed by the Christian Democratic party, which is in a neck-and-neck race with the Social Democrats. A third party, the Free Democrats, a junior partner in the national government coalition led by the Christian Democrats, is in danger of losing all its seats in the Lower Saxony election if it fails to receive at least 5% of the vote required for representation.

Thus, the Social Democrats, if they outpaced the Christian Democrats but obtained less than a majority in the June 15 election, might be forced to seek a coalition with the Greens, and their leader, Gerhard Schroeder, says he would try to do so.

The Greens could also become a national force in the general election scheduled for next January if they poll more than 5% and if the Social Democrats come close to a majority in the balloting. The Greens are represented in the current Bundestag, or lower house of Parliament, in which Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s coalition holds a comfortable majority.

Petra Kelly, a Greens leader, said the party will make its anti-nuclear-power and anti-NATO policies conditions for entering into any coalition with the Social Democrats after the national election.

The meeting of the Greens congress in Hanover, capital of Lower Saxony, came as members of the party and other anti-nuclear groups staged sometimes violent demonstrations in Bavaria, protesting a planned nuclear reprocessing plant near Wackersdorf.

Third Day of Protests

About 20,000 anti-nuclear demonstrators continued their protest for a third day Monday at the plant site. Police said that 800 to 1,000 of the protesters threw rocks, ball bearings, Molotov cocktails and firecrackers. About 1,000 riot police equipped with shields and clubs and backed by helicopters used water cannon and tear gas on the rioters, but a fence around the construction site was damaged in several places.

At least 161 policemen and about 200 demonstrators were injured in the skirmishes that have broken out intermittently since Friday, authorities and spokesmen for the protesters said.

As in the past, the debate at the Greens congress was marked by fiercely opposing views between the “Realists” (Realos) and “Fundamentalists” (Fundis) wings.

The Realos believe that the Greens must agree, at least in principle, to the idea of a coalition with the Social Democrats to survive as a credible political force. The Fundis are against any cooperation with the opposition party, on the grounds that the Greens would lose their purity.

The Fundis seemed in the ascendancy over the weekend, after a move by the moderates to leave out the anti-NATO plank in the platform and concentrate on the more popular anti-nuclear issues was voted down.

The congress actually branded NATO as an “enemy organization” and said there could be no peace in Europe as long as the postwar alliance existed. However, the moderates managed to have condemnation of the Communist Warsaw Pact included in the anti-NATO plank so as not to appear to be pro-Soviet.