No Quitting Warsaw Pact, Kremlin Says

Welcoming East Germany’s leadership changes as an important step toward political reform, the Soviet Union said Thursday that it will accept a non-Communist government there and in other East European countries if they remain members of the Warsaw Pact.

Gennady I. Gerasimov, chief spokesman for the Soviet Foreign Ministry, said Moscow adheres to the principle that each nation is free to decide its own political system and to elect its own government but that it is concerned that European stability be maintained as a guarantee of peace.

His comments significantly extended Moscow’s tolerance for political reform among its East European allies but at the same time made it clear that the East-West balance of power must not be directly altered in the process.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, whose reforms set in motion many of the sweeping changes under way in Eastern Europe, wants to discuss them and their implications for international stability when he meets next month with President Bush, Gerasimov said.

The relaxed Soviet attitude seems likely to be put to the test in East Germany, whose front-line position in the Warsaw Pact makes the changes there even more sensitive than they were in Hungary or Poland. But Moscow’s resolve to accept and even to encourage fast-paced reform in Eastern Europe seems firm.

“These changes are for the better, that is for sure,” Gerasimov said, commenting on the unprecedented resignation of the entire Politburo of East Germany’s ruling Communist Party and the replacement of most of its members when a new Politburo was formed.

The Soviet Union views all the changes in East Germany as “very important decisions” and “a renewal of socialism” there, Gerasimov said. He praised the Communist leadership in Berlin for opening a long-delayed dialogue with the political opposition and “moving toward perestroika on their own terms”--a reference to the reforms undertaken in the Soviet Union.

Questioned about the Soviet attitude should a coalition or non-Communist government emerge from the open elections the East German leadership is now discussing, Gerasimov said Moscow would show the same tolerance as it had when a Solidarity-led government took office in Poland earlier this year.

“Poland is a good member of the Warsaw Pact, and in Poland you have a coalition, you don’t have a Communist government in Poland,” Gerasimov said. “You see, governments may change, but international obligations remain. . . . It’s their (East Germany’s) decision, just like in Poland. It’s their country, they know it better. What can we do?”

Gorbachev encouraged Egon Krenz, the new East German leader, to broaden and accelerate East Berlin’s timid attempts at reform when Krenz visited Moscow last week. He had earlier seemed to nudge the longtime East German leader, Erich Honecker, into retirement, warning his comrades that “history will punish those who are late” in implementing reforms.

Gerasimov, speaking for Gorbachev last month on a visit to Finland, had announced what he called the “Sinatra Doctrine”--a play on Frank Sinatra’s song, “My Way”--to reiterate Moscow’s abandonment of the 1968 Brezhnev Doctrine, which asserted the right of socialist countries to intervene, even militarily, in each other’s domestic politics if socialism seemed to be threatened there.

But on Thursday, Gerasimov firmly rejected widespread Western speculation about the possible dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, which groups the Soviet Union and its six East European allies, and the future reunification of East and West Germany.

The Warsaw Pact, formed as an answer to the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization, has “a stabilizing character,” Gerasimov said, criticizing what he described as Western efforts to “encourage centrifugal tendencies” that would pull the alliance apart.

“Let’s disband the Warsaw Pact together simultaneously with NATO, and then maybe the situation is going to change,” he said, reiterating the Warsaw Pact’s call for dissolution of both alliances on the basis of agreements cutting back military forces in Europe. “Then we can review things and discuss everything afresh.”

Describing East Germany as “a strategic ally” of the Soviet Union because of its front-line position in the Warsaw Pact, Gerasimov said that its future as an independent state is part of the East-West balance of power in Europe and that Moscow is committed to maintaining that balance.

The question of German reunification “cannot be viewed apart from the overall situation in Europe, which is still split into two alliances,” he said. “If we are to be realistic, any unification of Germany is out of the question now.”

Discussing the Soviet-American summit meeting, scheduled for Dec. 2 and 3 aboard warships off the Mediterranean island of Malta, Gerasimov said that one of Moscow’s goals will be to reach a broad understanding on the sweeping political changes under way in Central Europe.

Dubbing the summit “From Yalta to Malta,” Gerasimov recalled how postwar Europe had been effectively divided into spheres of influence and control by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin, the Soviet leader, at the Crimean resort town of Yalta in February, 1945. But Gerasimov denied that Moscow wants to redraw the map during the Bush-Gorbachev meeting at Malta.

“Yalta is a symbol of confrontation,” he said. “We are finishing that period and coming into a new period of building a common European home.”