Honecker’s Paris Trip Nurtures Western Ties

In 1935, Erich Honecker, in his first visit to France, came as a young Communist to attend an international congress against fascism. He was jailed by the Nazis upon his return to Berlin, rose high in Communist Party ranks after World War II, and did not return to Paris until this week, more than a half-century later, in a symbolic and official visit as the leader of East Germany.

The visit of Honecker, now 75, is the first by an East German leader to France. In fact, it is the first by an East German leader to any of the three Western powers--France, Britain, and the United States--that still have legal jurisdiction with the Soviet Union over Berlin.

For Honecker, who has run East Germany for 17 years, the visit represents another step in his long campaign to open East Germany’s lines toward the West and gain more standing for his Communist country.

The Paris newspaper Le Monde, in a front-page editorial, described the visit as “the result of the slow process of normalization of relations between East Germany and Western Europe.” Charles Lambroschini, foreign editor of Le Figaro, described it as “a new step in the confirmation of the international legitimacy of East Germany.”

The most important step came last September when Honecker visited West Germany and returned, again for the first time in more than a half-century, to his old hometown in the Saar region adjacent to the French border.

For France, the Honecker visit represents another step in its campaign to assert leadership in Europe, especially on the issue of disarmament. After the signing of the treaty eliminating ground-launched intermediate-range nuclear missiles by President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev at the summit in Washington last month, both President Francois Mitterrand and Premier Jacques Chirac of France made it clear that they want Western Europe to work out a unified approach toward future disarmament moves by the Communist bloc.

In meeting with Honecker, the French are talking with a Commuist who could be a factor in turning the West Germans away from the French position on European disarmament.

The nettlesome issue of disarmament arose soon after Honecker arrived in Paris on Thursday. In their first round of private talks, according to the French briefers, President Mitterrand stressed his opposition to Honecker’s proposal for the abolition in Europe of tactical or battlefield nuclear missiles, those with a range of less than 300 miles.

Mitterrand, who believes in the security of nuclear deterrence and fears that Europe might be overwhelmed by numerically superior conventional Soviet troops if all nuclear weapons were eliminated, said that the American and Soviet superpowers must first negotiate 50% cuts in the numbers of their long-range strategic nuclear missiles before there can be any discussion in Europe of a reduction or an elimination of short-range missiles.

France, which has a small nuclear arsenal of short-range and intermediate-range missiles, did not take part in the superpower nuclear disarmament negotiations and is not subject to the terms of the treaty.

Bringing up a French concern about the United States and the Soviet Union making decisions about the security of Europe without consulting Europeans, Mitterrand, in a toast to Honecker at dinner in the Elysee Palace, said that Europe “must not be the mute witness or the passive prize of East-West relations.”

Mitterrand also said that the visit of Honecker was a sign of the desire for reconciliation between “the French and the Germans, all the Germans, wherever they find themselves.” France and Germany had opposed each other in three major wars in a little over a hundred years. But France and West Germany now regard each other as a close ally. In two weeks, the two countries will celebrate the 25th anniversary of their treaty of friendship.

On the eve of Honecker’s arrival in Paris, the East German press published a letter to West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in which Honecker proposed the elimination of the short-range nucle1634869357deal of attention and some support in West Germany.

Many West Germans fear that, in case of a war, the short missiles would be aimed mainly at armies fighting on German soil. French officials insist that this is not so, but the denials have been too vague to convince the Germans.

Honecker heard a plea for the dismantling of the wall between East and West Berlin when he visited Premier Jacques Chirac. The wall, Chirac said, “which, I hope, will fall one day just like the useless and ridiculous walls of fortified cities of earlier times have fallen, reminds us that the division of our continent is not a simple concept, but a painful reality.”

In a symbolic gesture today, his last day in Paris, Honecker will lay a wreath at the wall in the Pere Lachaise cemetery where many fighters for the Paris Commune were executed by the French army in 1871. The rising of the Paris Commune is looked on as a historical and sentimental moment of great importance in leftist history.