Elections Rebuff Kohl, May Slow Reunification

Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s conservative Christian Democrats suffered a setback Sunday when voters in state elections took away the party’s majority in the upper house of the West German Parliament.

The defeat at the hands of the Social Democrats in voting in North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony could portend trouble for Kohl in general elections next December. It could also slow legislative action on reunification with East Germany, although it seems unlikely that it will derail the process.

Meanwhile, negotiators from the two Germanys during the weekend completed a draft of a state treaty that forms the cornerstone of reunification. The agreement is expected to be formally approved this week after Kohl meets with East German Prime Minister Lothar de Maiziere.

The treaty provides the basic building blocks of economic, social and currency unity. But it leaves many details open.

Among the major issues to be resolved are West German claims against East German property abandoned or seized by the now-defunct Communist regime; the costs of social security, and restructuring the mismanaged agricultural system so it can survive without the heavy state subsidies that once supported it.

Some details of the economic merger have been released. West Germany has said it will trade East German ostmarks for West German deutschemarks at an equal 1-to-1 rate for salaries, pensions and small savings accounts. That agreement becomes effective July 2.

The staggering cost of merging East and West Germany is a prime concern of West German taxpayers and has drawn complaints from the 11 state governments that Kohl’s center-right coalition in Bonn has not consulted them enough.

The Kohl government sees reunification financed largely from the private sector, and the chancellor has repeatedly sought to assure West Germans that their taxes will not be raised.

The Bundesrat, or upper house of Parliament, represents the states, and it has the power to delay some legislation.

The Social Democrats argue that the pace of reunification is moving too swiftly.

The process “needs to be slowed down somewhat,” Johannes Rau, the Social Democratic premier in North Rhine-Westphalia, told West German television Sunday night. He did not elaborate.

North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony are home to about 40% of West Germany’s population of 60 million and include the powerful Ruhr industrial area.

Final results late Sunday showed the Social Democrats with 44% of the vote in Lower Saxony, enough to topple the Christian Democrats’ one-seat majority in the state government. They also held onto their majority in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The elections posed the first major test at the ballot box for Kohl since the Berlin Wall was breached six months ago.

“In Lower Saxony we had a painful defeat,” Kohl said in a national television interview Sunday night. “It had several reasons . . . one is the uncertainty--what will German unity cost?”

The bloodless revolution in East Germany was quickly followed by calls for reunification, and Kohl became an enormously popular figure as he campaigned vigorously for the East German Christian Democrats, who easily won their country’s first free elections on March 18.

Kohl’s key challenger in West Germany’s December general elections is Oskar Lafontaine, a popular Social Democrat who favors more gradual reunification.

Lafontaine is recovering from an assassination attempt by a deranged woman who stabbed him in the neck during a campaign rally last month in Cologne.