Friendship Pact Signed by W. Germany, Soviets

West Germany and the Soviet Union Thursday initialed a 20-year friendship treaty that is aimed at expanding bilateral ties and building greater trust.

The accord, which will serve as a framework for German-Soviet political relations as well as economic and technical matters, was initialed by West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

The ceremony took place a day after the two Germanys and the four Allied powers of World War II signed a treaty that will restore full sovereignty to a united Germany on Oct. 3.

Thursday’s document, officially the Treaty on Good Neighborliness, Partnership and Cooperation, contains a call for closer political consultation, expanded trade and greater unofficial contacts between Soviets and Germans.

It includes a series of confidence-building measures aimed at easing the concerns of two nations that have lost 30 million people in two wars in this century. It speaks of a common wish to make a final break with the past and work toward greater understanding and reconciliation.

Both nations renounced any and all territorial claims and pledged that no such claims would be made in the future.

“We can now say, with justification, that the postwar period is at an end,” Genscher said at the ceremony.

Germany lost roughly 26,000 square miles of territory with the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945. Roughly half of that, including most of East Prussia, was integrated into the Soviet Union.

Many people from those areas now live in West Germany and, through a well-organized lobbying effort, have resisted any official admission that these lands are no longer German.

The new treaty guarantees cultural and language rights to the German-speaking people of the Soviet Union, many of whom have roots there that go back for centuries. The so-called Volga Germans, who for many years were concentrated along the Volga River, were dispersed during the Josef Stalin era and their culture suppressed.