WORLD IN BRIEF : GERMANY : Government Moves on Refugee Problem

Germany took a tentative first step toward changing its constitution to stop a swelling tide of impoverished asylum-seekers from Eastern Europe and the Third World. Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s three-party governing coalition adopted a draft resolution to tighten the country’s liberal asylum laws, but it failed to muster opposition support required for the necessary two-thirds vote in the lower house of Parliament, or Bundestag. The opposition Social Democrats plan to draft a more liberal proposal of their own at their party convention next month.