Germanys Begin Unification Talks : Meetings With World War II Victors to Start Next Week

The two Germanys today began preliminary unification talks, preparing for next week’s meeting with the four World War II allies on German unity.

Ernst Krabatsch, East Germany’s deputy foreign minister, was meeting with Dieter Kastrup, head of the political department at West Germany’s Foreign Ministry. They declined to comment to reporters.

The election commission, meanwhile, said 24 political parties will contest East Germany’s first free elections on March 18, the ADN news agency said.

Commission spokeswoman Petra Blaess said the final list includes the Communists, now renamed the Party for Democratic Socialism; the Social Democrats; the liberal Free Democrats; and the Alliance for Germany, a conservative coalition backed by West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union.

East Germany’s 12.2 million eligible voters will seat a new Parliament with 400 members, 100 fewer than the current People’s Chamber.

Today’s discussions are part of the so-called “two-plus-four” formula of unification negotiations agreed to in Ottawa last month. Under that formula the two German nations are to discuss the domestic aspects of unification.

On Wednesday in Bonn, the two Germanys are scheduled to meet with low-level officials from the four World War II victors--the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain and France--for initial talks on how unification would affect European security and the concerns of other nations.

Although the talks come barely a week before March 18 elections that are expected to remove East Germany’s Communist government from power, the East Berlin government is carrying out the dialogue with the approval of 15 other parties.

The four World War II powers have given their blessing to the idea of German unification, but enormous problems need to be overcome.

One of the thorniest stems from Moscow’s insistence that a united Germany not be a NATO member. Kohl on Thursday reassured NATO members in Brussels of West Germany’s wish for the new country to remain in the Western alliance.

“We will continue talks on all levels. Nobody need fear Germany will go its own way,” he said.

In addition, Poland on Thursday reiterated its demand for a role in the talks, despite a vote by West Germany’s Parliament that a united Germany should honor Poland’s western border. About a third of Poland was German territory before World War II.

Kohl has come under fire abroad and at home for his previous reluctance to unequivocally state that a united Germany would never lay claim to land ceded to Poland after the Third Reich’s 1945 defeat.

Kohl, apparently trying to avoid offending conservative voters before federal elections in December, had insisted that only the government of a united Germany could address the matter.