Two Germanys Preparing for Major Spy Swap : Diplomacy: The exchange, involving 28 people, is meant to provide a clean slate for East-West cooperation.

The West German government announced Wednesday that one of the biggest ever exchanges of spies with East Germany could occur before Christmas.

Bonn said it will soon swap four Communist-run agents in return for the release of 24 accused Western operatives held by East Germany.

The announcement came after West German President Richard von Weizsaecker reported that he had pardoned two government secretaries who had passed state secrets to their Communist agent-lovers.

After West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s talks with East German Prime Minister Hans Modrow in Dresden, West Germany’s minister for inner-German affairs, Dorothee Wilms, declared of the negotiated spy exchange:

“I hope this means the chapter of prisoners and agents is now ended. That is the prerequisite for the two governments to cooperate in trust.”

Meanwhile, Kohl and Modrow agreed that Berlin’s most famous symbol, the Brandenburg Gate, should be opened to pedestrian traffic Friday. Both leaders are expected to attend the ceremony, which would be a final, significant breaching of the Berlin Wall, in the eyes of most Germans.

In Dresden, concluding his two-day, first visit to East Germany, Kohl met with opposition and church leaders and urged them to help shape future relations between the two Germanys.

He told a news conference that Bonn would like, as soon as possible, to assist in dealing with such joint East-West German problems as rebuilding the railroads, enhancing the environment and installing modern communications between the states.

Kohl’s proposals came on the same day that the Communist Party daily newspaper Neues Deutschland reported that East German industrial output decreased by 2.5% last month. The account attributed the fall to the exodus of East German workers, which led to the crisis that eventually saw the Communist Party regime overthrown.

The paper’s official report confirmed accounts circulating in diplomatic circles that the East German regime had been misreporting economic figures to show the economy in much better shape than is actually the case.

The paper reported serious consumer good shortages and reduced ability to fulfill export commitments.

In West Berlin on Wednesday, the West German opposition Social Democratic Party ended its three-day annual conference by pledging to work for unity with East Germany.

“We will strive for a state of peace in Europe in which the German people find unity in free self-determination,” the party said in its concluding statement.

In a “Berlin Declaration” approved Monday, the party indicated that it is planning to draw up ways of cooperating with East Germany that could lead to some kind of confederation.

Party leaders expressed concern that Kohl’s Christian Democrats may capitalize on the opening of the Berlin Wall and the German reunification issue to win another term in next December’s national election.

In Bonn, sources said Von Weizsaecker’s pardoning of the two secretaries, Elke Falk and Margret Hoeke, both West German citizens, was part of a deal that had been worked out between Walter Priesnitz, a senior Bonn official, and East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel.

Hoeke had been a secretary in Von Weizsaecker’s own office. She was sentenced to eight years in prison in August, 1987, when she admitted handing over state papers to her boyfriend, who worked for the KGB.

Falk worked in several Bonn ministries, including the chancellor’s office, and was jailed for 6 1/2 years last May.

She said she had passed secret documents to her control agent, whom she met through a newspaper lonely-hearts column in 1973.

The two women presumably will be allowed to remain in West Germany if they choose to do so.

Vogel has long been identified with spy exchanges, beginning with the swap of American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Soviet master spy Rudolf Abel.