Honecker Asks Central Europe Hot Line

East German leader Erich Honecker on Monday proposed a telephone hot line linking Bonn, East Berlin and Prague in order to reduce the possibility of military incidents getting out of hand.

Honecker told an international meeting in East Berlin that such a hot line would be the “machinery for peaceful crisis management” in Central Europe.

He also suggested that a joint East-West body be formed to deal with potential crises and that data be exchanged on “relevant military activities in the region.” Such a body, he said, could form “a center of permanent confidence-building.”

In addition, Honecker called for a zone free of nuclear weapons along the West German and East German borders with Czechoslovakia--the line that forms the frontier between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Communist Warsaw Pact nations.

This, he said, would “stabilize the situation at the dividing line between the two alliances.”

Nuclear-Free Zones

In attendance at the meeting were more than 1,000 delegates from 111 countries gathered to discuss the establishment of nuclear-free zones in various parts of the world. The idea of such zones has been supported by many neutral nations, among them Sweden and Atlantic Alliance members such as Denmark and Norway.

But the concept has been strongly opposed by the United States and other members of NATO on grounds that such zones would play into the hands of the Soviets.

The chief reason for NATO’s deployment of nuclear weapons, officials of the organization say, is the Warsaw Pact powers’ advantage in conventional weapons. Nuclear weapons, they say, are necessary to maintain the military balance and act as a deterrent to any attack by the East Bloc’s conventional forces.

Honecker has pushed the idea of nuclear-free zones, and the East German press has been supporting the idea for weeks.

He said Monday that nuclear-free zones could “lead directly to the reduction of weapons of mass destruction and their elimination.”