East Berlin Raps Hungary; Soviets Hit ‘Unusual Step’

Tempers rose in East Berlin today, and Moscow accused fellow Warsaw Pact ally Hungary of taking “an unusual step” in letting more than 10,000 East Germans cross the border to West Germany.

Soviet Politburo member Yegor K. Ligachev also flew to East Berlin in what Western diplomats saw as a Kremlin gesture of moral support, but Moscow denied that the trip was tied to the biggest refugee flow since the Berlin Wall was built in 1961.

East Berlin demanded that Hungary stop East Germans from streaming to the West and said it expects Hungary to revoke its decision to suspend parts of a visa-free travel agreement between them.

“Hungary’s behavior is a clear violation of legal treaties and thus constitutes a violation of the basic interests of East Germany. The Hungarian side is responsible for the resulting situation,” said an official protest handed to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry and published by the ADN news agency.

Hungary’s foreign minister, Gyula Horn, rejected as “unacceptable and insulting” a persistent East Berlin suggestion that Hungary had been paid by Bonn to allow the refugees out.

‘Dollars Are Flowing’

But East German official media kept up an onslaught against Budapest.

“Dollars are flowing into the pockets of reformers who are capitalists’ friends,” wrote Hans-Dieter Schuett, editor of the Communist youth daily Junge Welt.

The Soviet Union, which leads the Warsaw Pact but is pledged to economic and political openness, also stepped into the dispute.

“Hungary has taken an unusual step,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov told a Moscow news conference, without directly criticizing the Hungarian government.

“Naturally this situation is of some concern to us,” he said. “But it does not affect us directly.”

Monday’s surge across the open border between Hungary and Austria slowed today, dashing speculation that another wave of East German tourists in Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria might vote with their feet and head West through Hungary rather than going home after their vacations.

Figures Disputed

Hungary denied a Budapest radio report that 16,000 East Germans had crossed from Czechoslovakia on Monday and said the real figure was fewer than 5,000.

But Austrian officials said more than 10,600 East Germans had crossed from Hungary into Austria on their way to West Germany since Budapest opened the frontier at midnight Sunday. About 4,000 tourists joined 6,500 who had waited in Hungarian camps.

Only about 40 refugees arrived this afternoon, Red Cross officials said.

“For the moment there is no indication that there will be another great wave,” said Heinrich Unger, Red Cross director for the Austrian border region of Burgenland.

Echoes of the exodus reverberated in Czechoslovakia, where more than 250 East Germans who had occupied the West German Embassy in Prague gave up their bid to gain passage to the West.

They left the building to head for home after getting pledges of official aid to get to the West legally, Western diplomats said. Another 145 would-be emigres stayed in the mission.