City State Proposal For Berlin Rejected

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29739, 5 February 1962, Page 13

City State Proposal For Berlin Rejected

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) BERLIN, Feb. 3. West Berlin city officials today termed a reported Soviet proposal to turn West Berlin into a city state with independent United Nations membership, “out of the question.” In Bonn, a Government spokesman said that if the Russians had made such a proposal “our reply can only be negative.”

The Russian plan was said to have been outlined by the Russian Foreign Minister (Mr Gromyko) to the United States Ambassador in Moscow (Mr Llewellyn Thompson) early last month. It would have required the ending of the Allied occupation and the declaration of West Berlin as a free demilitarised city, before it became independent. According to the Associated Press, the Russians had also proposed separate United Nations membership for East and West Germany.

Logical Development A Government spokesman In Bonn said such a proposal, if it was made, would be a logical development in the Soviet attempt to turn West Berlin into an independent political unit, ending all its political connexions with West Germay. and to get international recognition for the satellite regime in East Germany. The West German Government based its whole foreign policy on preventing those two things. The spokesman said the only way to deal with a proposal to this effect would be to reject it outright and in toto. West Germany would always prefer to stay

out of the United Nations than get membership under such terms. The country had never applied for United Nations membership because of the certainty that the Soviet Union would try to use the application to get in East Germany and so make permanent Germany's division. The proposal that West Berlin become an independent city-State, was, according to experts in Wasbing-

ton, unrealistic, as West Berlin could not exist without extensive economic ties with West Germany. When Mr Thompson saw Mr Gromyko again on Friday he is believed to have given him Washington's replies to the proposals, the Associated Press said. No sources would divulge Mr Thompson's reply but observers assumed he was instructed to reject the Soviet suggestion.