Germans Say Communists Incited Unrest

Both East and West German leaders accused the Communist Party on Friday of preying on the fears of East Germans who have been demonstrating against the planned German economic union.

East German Social Democratic leader Richard Schroeder, in an interview with the West German Bild newspaper, called the Communist Party a “Trojan horse” in the new East German democracy.

He said the Communists played on the fears of the people, and that the appearance of party leader Gregor Gysi at every demonstration only fuels the common belief that economic union would cause massive unemployment.

“The Party of Democratic Socialism is just like the old Communist Party,” Schroeder said, referring to the new name taken by the Communists after last fall’s ouster of the hard-line Communist government.

West German government spokesman Hans Klein agreed in a statement Friday at a news conference. The Christian Democratic minister said: “Some of the people who are, in part, behind the strikes are the same people who got East Germany into the mess it’s in in the first place.”

But Gysi said East Germans are being kept too much in the dark about what is being negotiated and need to plan for economic changes.

He said the East German negotiating team has gone into talks in a “stooped posture” to the West German delegation, which wants to remove all vestiges of the former socialist regime.

The thousands of East Germans who participated in the warning strikes and demonstrations Thursday were protesting the terms of the economic treaty scheduled to go into effect July 2.

East German farmers blocked border crossings, halting West German delivery of agricultural products.

Nearly 2,000 teachers demonstrated in front of the East German Parliament, demanding higher wages and joining factory workers in a one-hour work stoppage.