Kohl to Visit Moscow, Washington to Discuss German Reunification

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl will travel to Moscow on Saturday and to Washington later this month to confer on the prospects for German unification in the face of the dramatic changes unfolding in Eastern Europe, officials in both capitals announced today.

President Bush and Kohl will meet at Camp David, Md., White House aides traveling with Bush in San Francisco said.

Bush is also conferring this weekend at Camp David with NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner, the aides said.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III is now in Moscow, reportedly carrying the outline of an allied plan on German reunification.

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze announced the surprise visit by Kohl and his foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, while speaking to reporters at the start of Shevardnadze’s meeting with Baker in Moscow.

“This is a very important process,” Shevardnadze said.

East German Premier Hans Modrow was recently in Moscow for talks that also covered reunification.

One of the major stumbling blocks to union of the two Germanys is Western insistence that Germany stay in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the alliance forged after World War II to defend against attack from the Communist East Bloc. The Soviet Union and its allied states formed the Warsaw Pact in response, but now that military pact appears to be disintegrating.