Bonn Pledges $7 Billion for Soviet Pullout

The West German government will pay Moscow more than $7 billion toward the expenses of withdrawing Soviet troops from East Germany, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Monday.

The agreement, announced two days before an international accord on German reunification is to be signed in Moscow, ensures that all four World War II Allies support ending four decades of division.

Bonn’s share of the withdrawal cost had been the last major obstacle to agreement among the six nations involved in the so-called two-plus-four negotiations.

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze told reporters in Moscow that a compromise had been reached and that the Kremlin was satisfied with the terms.

He would not say just how much aid Bonn had promised. The money, he said, is “not charitable work, but the minimum needed to set up normal conditions for housing those returning.”

A spokesman for the West German Foreign Ministry said, however, that the two nations had agreed on a total of 12 billion marks, equivalent to about $7.6 billion.

Moscow had pressed for 18 billion marks from West Germany to pay for the resettlement of 370,000 Soviet soldiers now based in East Germany. The Soviets have agreed to withdraw all troops by 1994, but a widespread housing shortage has made the soldiers and their families reluctant to go home.

Wives of Soviet officers stationed at a base near Burg, East Germany, complained last week that they and their children would be expected to live in tents this winter after they return to the Soviet Union.

West German negotiators reportedly had offered 7 billion marks (about $4.5 billion) before the compromise Monday.

“There will be no argument over sums,” Shevardnadze said after the breakthrough, only two days before the six-power talks were to be concluded.

The “two-plus-four” talks began in May as an effort to get the two Germanys and the four Allies of World War II--Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union--to work toward restoring sovereignty to a reunited Germany. The victorious powers have exercised control over the two states since they defeated the Nazis in 1945 and partitioned Germany in 1949.

Negotiations on reunification were completed last Friday, but the troop withdrawal terms remained unresolved. Then, on Monday, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev spoke by telephone for half an hour, according to Kohl’s spokesman, Dieter Vogel.