Spy Charges Spread, Jolting E. German Reform : Politics: A Social Democrat becomes the third party leader accused of working for the secret police.

East Germany’s new-found democracy suffered another blow Monday as a third party leader faced allegations of spying for the secret police.

Meanwhile, state prosecutors dropped treason charges against toppled Communist leader Erich Honecker and three top aides, including the former chief of the reviled Stasi security apparatus.

Social Democratic leader Ibrahim Boehme told a news conference he is stepping aside as head of the opposition party and will not take his seat as a parliamentary deputy until he can clear his name.

Boehme steadfastly denied a report by the respected West German news weekly Der Spiegel that an anonymous ex-officer in the Stasi had named him as a longtime informant who worked under a code name.

“I have at no time worked for the Stasi,” he told a press conference, adding that he has hired a lawyer.

Boehme’s self-imposed suspension appeared to further stall the 400-member Parliament’s attempts to form a ruling coalition eight days after the country’s first free elections. The Social Democrats placed a distant second in March 18 elections to a three-party conservative alliance led by the Christian Democrats.

The 85,000-member Stasi has been largely dismantled since November’s peaceful revolution, but East Germans appear to be increasingly demanding accountability from those who worked for one of the Cold War’s most chillingly effective spy agencies.

The organization routinely bugged telephones, opened mail and interrogated friends, neighbors and relatives of ordinary East Germans, as well as the dissidents, church members and asylum-seekers who were considered key targets.

Public protests over plans to employ dozens of ex-Stasi officers and Communist functionaries in the Rostock school system forced Mayor Henning Schleiff to resign Monday.

“It makes me sick to think these Stasi people would have anything to do with the education and development of our children,” one angry mother in the northern port town said on West German television.

Honecker and his former Stasi chief, Erich Mielke, still face charges of corruption and misuse of power but will not stand trial for high treason.

The prosecutor’s office said in a statement carried by the official East German news agency ADN that there was insufficient evidence to prove treason against Honecker, Mielke, former Economics Minister Guenter Mittag and Joachim Hermann, who was propaganda chief.

“The permanent violations of the constitution, which there undoubtedly were, resulted from the distorted Stalinistic influence of the (Communist) Party’s leading role and should be attributed to the entire former system,” the prosecutor’s statement said.

Honecker and his lieutenants still face charges of misuse of office and corruption. They are accused of skimming millions from the Communist system and living in relative luxury while citizens often waited years for adequate housing and queued up outside shops for scarce consumer goods.

Honecker, 77, has been recovering from cancer surgery in the cramped guest room of a village pastor. Attempts to move him to a waterfront government villa over the weekend in hopes of speeding his recuperation and trial were thwarted by angry citizens.

While the reckoning of East Germany’s old government appears to be on hold, the dawning of its democracy has been equally slow.

The most likely candidate for prime minister, Lothar de Maiziere, is also fighting rumors that he informed for the security police.

The anonymous rumors, carried by both East and West German media, could also impede reunification.

De Maiziere’s party was heavily backed both financially and strategically by West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democratic Party. De Maiziere reportedly assured Kohl that the rumors are unfounded during a post-election meeting in Bonn last week.

His party won its victory despite an election-eve scandal that resulted in the embarrassing resignation of Wolfgang Schnur, head of Democratic Awakening, an alliance partner. Schnur admitted he had been a paid Stasi informant.

De Maiziere, a 50-year-old classical musician and human rights lawyer, maintains that his only contact with the Stasi was purely professional as he defended conscientious objectors, church members and other alleged enemies of the state.

Werner Fischer, chairman of the independent committee overseeing dismantlement of the Stasi, has publicly hinted that 10% of the new Parliament members, including De Maiziere, may have had unseemly connections with the Stasi. Stasi files now sealed by prosecutors and guarded by citizen committees are said to name at least 40% of the adult population in this country of 16 million.

Officials of Boehme’s party, the Social Democrats, have declared that they will demand a parliamentary investigation of Stasi ties among deputies as soon as the chamber meets for the first time. The Christian Democrats and smaller parties have resisted a general screening of the deputies, expressing fears that a “witch hunt” would deeply injure the country’s fledgling democracy.

The prosecutor’s office has said that any such investigation, to be constitutional, must be done by Parliament itself.