Anti-Nuclear Protesters Ring U.S. Missile Base in West Germany

More than 100,000 demonstrators formed a seven-mile ring around an American missile base for three hours Saturday, in what their leaders and police said was West Germany’s biggest, most peaceful anti-nuclear protest in three years.

Trade unionists, theologians, punks, hippies and middle-class families with toddlers joined in the protest, held in a carnival atmosphere in warm autumn sunshine.

The banner-waving demonstrators came from all parts of the country to protest at the base in wooded hills south of Coblenz, where the U.S. Air Force’s 38th Tactical Missile Wing is due to deploy 96 nuclear-tipped medium-range cruise missiles by the end of 1987.

The protest coincided with the opening meeting of President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Iceland, but had been planned before the superpower summit was announced.

A crowd overflowing several fields heard speakers on a huge stage demand disarmament and challenge the superpowers to rid the world of atomic weapons.

‘A Thorough Success’

“The police as well as the organizers consider this rally a thorough success,” police commander Ulrich Pett told a news conference. “We are more than happy with the way it went.”

Pett said there were no arrests. Police estimated the crowd at just over 100,000, but demonstrators put it much higher.

“Our final estimate is between 180,000 and 200,000 people,” spokesman Andreas Zumach told a news conference.

Asked about the discrepancy with police figures, he said: “Perhaps the real figure is just not politically acceptable.”

“This demonstration proved that reports of the death of our peace movement were highly exaggerated,” Zumach said. “It’s the biggest demonstration we have organized since 1983 in Bonn, and the biggest ever in West Germany outside the capital.”

About 300,000 people protested in Bonn in 1983 in a vain effort to stop parliamentary approval of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization plan to deploy the 96 cruise and 108 Pershing 2 missiles, a decision that appeared to send the anti-nuclear movement into retreat.