Reunification Could Hurt Europe, East German Says

The new chairman of the East German Communist Party warned an emergency session of the party congress Sunday that German reunification could threaten peace and stability in Europe.

Lawyer Gregor Gysi, who was elected chairman only last week, urged the nearly 2,600 delegates to the Congress to fight reunification. He described talk about eventual German reunification as “playing with fire.”

Gysi said the issue could lead to further negotiations over Eastern European borders, which he indicated would be a dangerous situation.

The 41-year-old Gysi also said that a united Germany would result in a victory for the right-wing and in East Germany’s becoming the “poor relation” of West Germany.

Also on Sunday, West German President Richard von Weizsaecker made a surprise visit to Potsdam, where he met his East German counterpart, Manfred Gerlach, and Prime Minister Hans Modrow for a 30-minute chat.

Von Weizsaecker, a former mayor of East Berlin, attended a carol service at the St. Nicholas Church in Potsdam.

He met the East German leaders at the Cecilienhof, site of the 1945 Potsdam Conference of the victorious World War II powers--the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union.

After the meeting, Von Weizsaecker said the two sides agreed that caution and mutual trust should underlie future relations between the two parts of the divided German state.

Both Von Weizsaecker and Modrow said that their respective defense alliances, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact, should be able to rely on their countries.

Von Weizsaecker added that any moves toward German reunification should be in the context of larger efforts in the direction of European unity.

In his long speech to the Communist congress, Gysi declared that the campaign for the first free elections in East Germany, scheduled for next May 6, has already begun and that the Communists have a hard fight ahead.

Before ending the two-day session Sunday, the delegates in the vast main sports hall sang the traditional Communist anthem, the “Internationale.”

But in other respects, delegates to the congress--traditionally, the ultimate authority in the Communist state--broke with their own past. They changed the party’s name to the jaw-breaking Socialist Unity Party of Germany--Party of Democratic Socialism, or, for short, SED-PDS, its new German initials.

The delegates also adopted Gysi’s speech as a policy document that sketches out a future program.

The program includes a new constitution, economic reforms, establishing diplomatic relations with Israel, a reduction in the size of East German military forces and an end to Nazi-like, goose-stepping military parades.

In the Jerusalem daily Haaretz on Sunday, Modrow was quoted as saying his nation is willing to change its policy of denying responsibility for the Nazi Holocaust as a way to establish diplomatic ties with Israel.

“We have approached Israel officially with a request to discuss establishing diplomatic relations,” Modrow was quoted as saying.

Gysi also firmly backed the government of reformist Modrow, who is also a deputy party leader.

In another development, the government announced that it is abolishing the recently established Bureau of National Security, which replaced the detested State Security Service, or Stasi.

The bureau will be replaced by an organization said to be more like its Western security counterparts--without the widespread network of domestic spies. Its army of informers will have to look for more productive employment, a Cabinet statement said.

Also on Sunday, Democratic Awakening, one of the recently formed opposition groups, held its first congress, attended by about 300 delegates.