E. Berlin Bars Refugees From U.S. Embassy

More than 100 East German police officers sealed off the U.S. Embassy here Wednesday to prevent a crowd of East Germans from pushing their way in after learning that 18 others were seeking refuge there.

The 18 had slipped into the embassy Tuesday through a side door and insisted on being helped to flee the country.

But by nightfall they had been persuaded to leave, on the assurance that the East German government would “view favorably” their applications for emigrant visas.

Elsewhere in Europe, East Germans swam rivers, jammed railroad stations and crowded into other Western embassies hoping somehow to get to the West. Such scenes were being played out in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Bulgaria.

Dresden Blockade

In Prague, the Czechoslovak capital, thousands of East Germans were boarding trains for West Germany. Thousands of others were lining up along the route hoping to get on board. At just one point, in Dresden, 3,000 people were reported to have been driven by the police from the right-of-way.

In Warsaw, more than 100 East Germans arrived at the West German Embassy seeking asylum, bringing the number of East German refugees there to about 400. Some of them told of swimming rivers and evading border guards to get there.

In Sofia, Bulgaria, four East Germans were reported to have asked for asylum at the West German Embassy.

At the U.S. Embassy in East Berlin, the 18 unexpected guests--10 men and women and eight children, including three infants--were kept in an anteroom off the main lobby. The curtains were drawn, and no outsiders were admitted.

When the door was opened, they could be seen, in jeans and sneakers, lounging in leather chairs. Cartons of milk and mineral water stood next to three portable cribs.

“We have a problem,” an embassy official said. “We can’t throw them out on the street.”

In Washington a State Department official said, “We are devoting every effort toward finding a humanitarian solution to their plight.”

No details were made public here on what might have taken place between U.S. and East German officials. According to one report, embassy officials had talked with Wolfgang Vogel, the East Berlin lawyer who has been involved in earlier such situations.

Crowd Gathered

When it became known Wednesday morning that the East Germans had managed to get into the embassy, a crowd began gathering in front of the building. Several people, some of them carrying suitcases, tried to get in through the front door.

One of them, a young woman with a 3-year-old daughter, told reporters: “We heard the news on the radio that people were going into the American Embassy to leave East Germany--and we decided to do the same thing. But they wouldn’t let us in.”

People crowded around the entrance, but East German police soon arrived and herded them across the street. Later in the day, the police cordoned off the entire block and closed it to vehicular and pedestrian traffic.

Sources in West Germany said that the trains carrying East Germans out of Prague would take a route different from that taken over the weekend, when scores of people along the way jumped on board. They said the route would move over a small section in the southwestern corner of East Germany, just enough to allow the East German authorities--who have sought to avoid the stigma of mass defections--to say the travelers were being expelled.

In Prague, the second wave of freedom-seeking East Germans left the West German Embassy to the sustained applause of several thousand Czechoslovak onlookers.

Czechoslovak officials, whose evident impatience with the East German government may have spurred the exodus, estimated that between 11,000 and 12,000 East Germans will make the trip in an operation that was expected to require at least 12 trains and most of the night to accomplish.

Coins Discarded

As the first train pulled out of Liben station in northeast Prague, with about 1,000 cheering East Germans on board, the boarding area echoed with the sound of East German coins flung from the windows. Czechoslovak police, standing by with their arms folded, smiled and shook their heads as if in disbelief at the events of the past few days.

The departure of the East Germans came five days after a similar operation, which removed 6,000 East Germans from inside and around the West German Embassy. West Germany confers automatic citizenship on East Germans.

At the time, officials thought the arrangement was a one-time deal struck by East Germany, West Germany and Czechoslovakia. But within days the embassy grounds were again full, and East Germans continued to arrive until Tuesday, when the government in Berlin imposed restrictions on travel to Czechoslovakia, which has become one of the East Germans’ major routes to the West.

By the time East Germany agreed Tuesday to allow a second group of East Germans to leave Prague, nearly 10,000 were camped on the embassy grounds and in the streets approaching the 18th-Century palace that houses the West German mission.

Trouble Clearing Tracks

Officials at the embassy had expected the new departures to begin Tuesday night. But a Czechoslovak official at the Transportation Ministry said Wednesday that the East Germans had a problem clearing the railroad tracks of people who hoped to board the trains.

Diplomatic sources said the Czechoslovak government, increasingly concerned over widespread public sympathy for the emigrants, pushed the East Germans to move quickly to bring the drama to a conclusion. Some sources suggested that the Czechoslovak government may have threatened to open its borders with West Germany unless the East Germans moved quickly.

Along with East Germany, Czechoslovakia is among the East Bloc’s rock-ribbed resisters to political reform, and the government here has been seriously rattled by the problem of the East German refugees. Although the Czechoslovak government has been philosophically inclined to deal harshly with the East Germans--and to uphold bilateral agreements that would prevent their departure to the West--the involvement of a Western diplomatic mission and world press attention presented it with an almost insoluble problem.

Apparent Confusion

The confusion of the Czechoslovak authorities was apparent in the sometimes schizophrenic reaction of the police, who forcibly detained East Germans trying to scale the fences at the West German Embassy, then relented and let scores--and then hundreds--to enter unimpeded. By Tuesday, the police were simply standing on the fringes of the large crowd, which remained orderly and quiet.

But for a Czechoslovak government that is not averse to turning fire hoses on its own protesting citizens, the spectacle of massive socialist disobedience--much of it obviously supported by the population of Prague--was hard to take.

Many Prague residents offered lodgings to the East Germans, particularly to young parents with small children. Taxi drivers were ferrying them to the neighborhood of the embassy without charge. Many brought food to them, offered to cook and gave candy to the children.

Thousands more came simply to watch, seemingly caught up in the spectacle. When the buses began to load Wednesday evening, thousands of Czechoslovaks watched from a closed-off plaza and applauded as the East Germans, in groups of about 60, moved along the street to board the buses.

At the railroad station, the mood, after days of tension, was jubilant. As West German Ambassador Hermann Huber looked on, the travelers trooped into the train carrying babies and backpacks, flung down the compartment windows and marveled at their good luck.

“We are totally happy,” said Christiane Busching, a 19-year-old from Dessau.

“I got here only yesterday,” said Dianna Krause, 21, from Furstenwalde. “We were very lucky. We got here just before they closed the border.”

Few observers here believe that the move by the East Germans to restrict travel--to require exit visas for travel to Czechoslovakia--will do more than slow the exodus. They point out that much of the border, about 150 miles of it, is unguarded, and that many will attempt to cross through the forests to get to Czechoslovakia, where officials at the West German Embassy in Prague have said they will be willing to take them in.

The refugee problem has highlighted the growing isolation of the hard-line states on the western edge of the Soviet Bloc, which are now forced to deal with the fallout from reforms being made in Hungary and Poland.

It has also brought intense embarrassment to the regime of 77-year-old Erich Honecker in East Berlin, whose government this weekend will observe the 40th anniversary of the founding of the East German state. Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev is scheduled to be on hand for the anniversary, and the sudden exodus--and growing restiveness--of the East German population will almost certainly be a topic of his discussions with the ailing Honecker.

Tuohy reported from East Berlin and Powers from Prague.