Krenz, in Moscow, Pledges Reforms for East Germany

East Germany’s new Communist leader, Egon Krenz, said here Wednesday that he will submit a program of political and economic change to his ruling Socialist Unity Party when its policy-making Central Committee meets next week. He predicted that its adoption will mark a historic turning point for his country.

Krenz, speaking after three hours of talks with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, said he wants to apply the lessons of perestroika (restructuring) to East Germany. But he cautioned that he intends to strengthen--not weaken--socialism through reform.

With tens of thousands of East Germans continuing to demonstrate daily, demanding free elections, legalization of opposition groups, an end to press censorship and other changes, Krenz said the party leadership is committed to reform and to opening a political dialogue with its critics.

“Many people are out on the streets to show that they want a better socialism and the renovation of society,” Krenz said. “I consider this to be a very good sign, an indication that we are at a turning point in the life of the German Democratic Republic. . . .

“We will take up every idea that is expressed,” Krenz said. “I cannot, of course, promise that we will solve all the problems, but we should not just be making promises but getting down to work.”

He said the party will propose changes in the country’s election laws before the 1991 parliamentary elections and put forward legislation soon that will permit every East German to obtain “a passport and visa for travel to every country in the world.”

Referring to the mass flight of more than 120,000 of the country’s 16.6-million people to West Germany this year, Krenz said he believes that reforms will persuade East Germans to stay.

“When we make socialism more attractive in our land, then there is no doubt that trust will be regained and people will stay at home,” he said.

Widely regarded as a hard-liner, the 52-year-old Krenz sought to project an image of conciliation and reform at his first full-scale news conference since replacing Erich Honecker, the longtime East German party leader who was his political mentor.

The time has come for change in East Germany, he said of Honecker’s retirement two weeks ago, adding, “Those who do not want to accept changes are not real politicians.”

He rejected the characterization of himself as tough and ideologically orthodox in the Honecker mold. “I am not a hard-liner--I am a Communist,” he declared in the course of a lively, 75-minute exchange with the press.

Honecker had rejected perestroika , the Gorbachev reform program, as unnecessary, at least for East Germany, and had told other East European leaders that he feared it threatened the ideological purity of socialism. But Krenz emphasized that he wants to implement similar changes.

“We wholeheartedly support the process of revolutionary perestroika in the Soviet Union,” he said. “The process of perestroika determines the future of socialism in the world, and the future of the world depends on its success.”

The Soviet experience is a valuable lesson, he said, in political, economic and social reform. He said his party intends, as the Soviet Communist Party has tried, to draw everyone into the reform process and not to restrict politics and power to party members.

But every socialist country must make its own decisions, he said, and East Germany is not looking to the experiments in political pluralism in neighboring Poland or Hungary for inspiration.

“The main idea we think we can use is that perestroika is aimed at making socialism more attractive and more effective,” he said.

But Krenz, who led the East German youth organization and then was in charge of security matters, made it clear that some things remain immutable. The Berlin Wall will not come down, he said, and German reunification is out of the question.

The wall, erected in 1961 to halt an earlier exodus of political refugees to West Germany, is not only “a barrier to prevent people meeting each other,” as the West has charged, he said. “This is not just a border between two states but between two social systems and two military blocs with a great concentration of military power in the vicinity. . . .

“This border is a kind of protective shield. . . . The reason for it still exists. We should have a realistic point of view and not live in illusions.”

German reunification is also an illusion, Krenz said. “This question is not on our agenda,” he said, asserting that there is “nothing to reunite” between socialist East Germany and the capitalist West. “The stability of Europe is more important.”

EXODUS GROWS--Hundreds more East Germans flee to Czechoslovakia. A18