Hungary Tears Down Section of ‘Iron Curtain’

Frontier guards on Tuesday began dismantling part of Hungary’s portion of the symbolic “Iron Curtain” that has divided Europe for four decades as they started to remove the electrified barbed wire fence along the border with Austria.

The removal began outside the border village of Hegyeshalom, 85 miles northwest of Budapest, and at Sopron and Szombathely farther south, the three busiest crossing points into Austria.

“The political conditions are ripe,” Col. Balazs Novaki, deputy chief of staff of the National Command of frontier guards, told a news conference. “Restructuring in Hungary and the process of democratization does not make it necessary to maintain it.”

Novaki said that Hungary, once a partner in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, has “traditionally good relations with Austria,” and the presence of the menacing watch towers and barbed wire fences has disturbed local inhabitants since they were erected in 1949.

The move is also likely to improve Hungary’s image.

About 160 miles of the eight-foot-high fence along Hungary’s western border with Austria will be removed by Dec. 31, 1990. The border is actually 225 miles long, but roads, rivers and rail tracks take up about 75 miles where no fence has been raised.

Watchtowers and other control facilities will also be removed in the project estimated to cost $700,000 to $800,000. But periodic border patrols will continue.

The mayor of Hegyeshalom, Zoltan Vincze, said residents are “pleased to see the fence going because its removal restores the unity of the landscape.”

The barbed-wire fence runs between one and 1 1/2 miles east of the geographical border along the Danube plain. It was built in 1949 after the Communist takeover.

Significantly, Hungary consulted neither Austria nor its Warsaw Pact allies about its decision.

“Nor did we consult our Western neighbor when we decided to erect the fence,” Novaki noted.

In Vienna, Foreign Ministry spokesman Walter Greinert said Austria regarded the dismantling of the fence a “very positive sign.”

But Austrian government sources fear that other East Europeans, especially Romanians now flooding into Hungary because of ethnic strife, could use Hungary as an easy transit route to the West by simply walking into Austria.

Hard-line Czechoslovakia and East Germany, both heavily resisting Soviet-style reforms, are likely to resent the removal of the physical barriers along Hungary’s western border for fear it will attract their citizens who might escape while on vacation in Hungary.