West European Leaders Set to Aid East Bloc

Leaders of a dozen West European democracies pledged “all the means at our disposal” here early today in order to assist what French President Francois Mitterrand called “the new march of Europe toward freedom.”

Meeting at an extraordinary working dinner in the Elysee Palace, the heads of government of the 12 European Community nations directed a troika from their group to draw up plans for a special bank to promote the development and modernization of Eastern Europe.

They also ordered a study on establishing a foundation to train East European managers and said they would open existing Common Market education and training programs to East European participants.

The steps were meant to encourage the process of reform in Eastern Europe and to cement the crucial interest of the West European leaders in the region before next month’s scheduled summit meeting off Malta between President Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

The developments in Eastern Europe are expected to be a major topic of the summit, and West European leaders want to ensure that their views are taken into account.

Mitterrand, who holds the EC’s rotating presidency through the end of this year, said he expects to report on Saturday’s three-hour emergency leadership session by telephone to both Bush and Gorbachev before their Mediterranean meeting.

Underlining the urgency of Western Europe’s concern, Saturday’s meeting was called by the French president on an unprecedented five days’ notice, after East Germany opened its border to the West.

The rapid and dramatic developments throughout Eastern Europe appeared to foster an unusual degree of agreement among even the EC’s most fractious leaders.

“We all felt the sense of history in what is happening in Europe,” commented British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who is frequently at odds with her EC peers. “We were very much aware of the responsibilities that rested upon us, that this movement must succeed,” she told reporters. “We felt very satisfied and very pleased with the evening’s work and with the harmony and unanimity of view.”

Thatcher is to meet with President Bush at Camp David this week.

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl told reporters that the meeting was characterized by a “consensus of joy and contentment but also a little anxiety and reserve” regarding the pace of events. “We must have a warm heart but a cool head,” the chancellor said.

The potentially divisive issue of German reunification was not brought up, Mitterrand said. And Kohl pledged that developments in East Germany will not lessen his country’s commitment to the EC.

“We’re saying that we’re ready; we’re prepared to cooperate in everything that will make it possible for East European countries to recover from the crisis they’re living through,” Mitterrand told reporters.

The indispensable conditions are that those countries make a “verified return to democracy with full human rights and a return to free and secret elections.”

The leaders agreed that Poland and Hungary require special help. They also extended their offer of aid to nonaligned Yugoslavia.

They urged that negotiations over crucial International Monetary Fund loans to Poland and Hungary be completed before the end of this year. And Thatcher called for more emergency aid to help the two countries through the coming winter.

The leaders also “looked at the fate of Yugoslavia,” Mitterrand said. While not a member of the Soviet Bloc, that country is “involved in the same kind of economic crisis that the other countries are.” And he promised that “the Community will intervene with a number of emergency plans for Yugoslavia as well.”

Referring to Friday’s violent police attack on a peaceful demonstration in Prague, Thatcher commented: “We were obviously disappointed by the events in Czechoslovakia, which we have witnessed, and hope, too, they will come to democracy before very long.”

While the West European leaders made no hard promises, Mitterrand did say that if democratic processes continue to develop in the eastern half of the Continent, “certain international institutions might be opened up” to reforming nations.

He mentioned the Council of Europe and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), but did not specifically cite the European Community even though Hungary, for one, has made no secret of its interest in ultimately joining that group.

“What we’re trying to do is set up bridges” at a number of levels, Mitterrand said, in order to “hasten the decline of totalitarianism.”

The French president stressed that during their meeting, the West European leaders “talked about totalitarianism; we didn’t talk about communism.”

Officials here gave few details about the possible funding and operation of the proposed development bank for Eastern Europe. However, Mitterrand, who first suggested the idea, said “there would be no point in having this bank if it couldn’t fall back on quite considerable resources.” There were unconfirmed reports that the Community might make up to $10 billion available through this mechanism.

Mitterrand said he had been directed by the leaders to develop the proposal further along with the immediate past EC president, Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez of Spain, and Irish Prime Minister Charles Haughey, who is scheduled to take over the presidency in January.

The Elysee Palace meeting occurred against the backdrop of a dramatic reassessment of existing institutions throughout Europe--East and West. As the United States and the Soviet Union pull back from Cold War confrontation in the middle of the Continent, the resulting vacuum of power there is seen as both a challenge and an opportunity to Western European nations, who are already preparing for closer union by 1992.

“The EC’s newly predominant role in shaping geopolitical developments, with the United States giving aid and encouragement from the sidelines, is a landmark in European history,” Britain’s Independent newspaper said in an editorial Saturday.

However, Thatcher stressed that questions of European borders are not on the agenda. “They should stay as they are, and all military matters must continue to be conducted through NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the Warsaw Pact,” she said. “We felt this arrangement had suited us all very well and at a time of great change it is necessary to keep the background of security and stability.”