Reunification Endorsed by Party in East Germany : Elections: Social Democrats say that if they win, they will move quickly to open negotiations with Bonn.

The East German Social Democratic Party, which is given a good chance of winning next month’s first competitive election, endorsed reunification without reservations Sunday and proposed a “binding timetable” to keep the process on track.

At the end of its four-day convention in Leipzig, the party said that if it wins, it will form a broad coalition and move quickly after the March 18 elections to open negotiations with West Germany to unify the country, divided since the end of World War II in 1945.

The party said the two Germanys should form joint parliamentary commissions in April to begin discussions of a unification agreement.

It also said that a Council for German Unity should be formed in April or May to draw up a constitution that would be submitted for approval to East and West.

The next step would be the dissolution of the two parliaments, the West German Bundestag and the East German Volkskammer, followed by all-German elections for a new Parliament.

Polls show that the party, formed four months ago as East Germany’s Communist autocracy was crumbling, is sailing toward a landslide in the elections.

An East German public opinion poll published in the current edition of Der Spiegel, the weekly West German news magazine, gave the Social Democrats 53% of the vote; the Alliance for Germany, a group of three conservative parties supported by West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democrats, 17%, and the Communists 12%. Other parties ranged from 1% to 4%.

Social Democratic leader Ibrahim Boehme, who is also a candidate for prime minister, told the convention: “We will need courage, caution and sometimes patience in taking the road to unity. The new Germany must never want to compete with the superpowers again.”

He also said there will be no place in his coalition for the Communist Party.

The Communists, convening in East Berlin on Sunday, named Hans Modrow, the prime minister of the East German caretaker government, its honorary chairman and choice for prime minister.

Modrow, 62, who took over the government in November and who is much more popular than his party, told the convention he had been reluctant to accept the nomination. He noted his record as a party official and said that the party must make a clean break with its Stalinist past.