Warsaw Pact to Eye Democratic Transformation

Leaders of the Warsaw Pact called today for a review of the organization’s aims and its transformation into a grouping of states “based on democratic principles.”

Pact leaders, in a statement issued after a one-day summit, said political change in Europe had made it possible to overcome the division of the continent.

“We therefore consider it necessary to review the character and functions of the Warsaw Pact,” the statement said.

The statement said the seven member states of the Soviet-led alliance are beginning a “transformation into a pact of sovereign and emancipated states based on democratic principles.”

The pact’s new role, it said, is linked with disarmament and the creation of a pan-European security system.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev had earlier told leaders at the summit, the first since popular revolutions purged Eastern Europe of hard-line Marxist rule, that the alliance has to change radically to survive.

Gorbachev said the Soviet Union could envisage “basically every sort of transformation of the Warsaw treaty, including various forms of membership and obligation.”

But officials said members agreed there was no question of a mass departure from the organization.

The final statement clearly marked a will throughout East Europe to end the pact’s role as forged 35 years ago to shore up Kremlin power and confront NATO.

Member states said concessions by both East and West had overcome “the ideological concept of the enemy. The concepts of East and West have now regained their purely geographical meaning.”