Adenauer Evades Bundestag Defeat

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30085, 20 March 1963, Page 13

Adenauer Evades Bundestag Defeat

(N Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) BONN, March 19. Chancellor Adenauer last night staved off certain defeat in the Bundestag by an adroit Parliamentary manoeuvre. His Christian Democrats boycotted the vote, thus forcing a ruling that there was no quorum.

The House was voting on a motion that the Government should cancel the retroactive clause in a ban, which became effective at midnight, on the sale of steel pipes to Russia.

The Government said the ban must apply to existing contracts, including 163.000 tons of piping which three firms last year contracted to supply to Russia Dr Adenauer’s junior coalition partn-rs. the Free Democrats, supported the opposition Social Democrats in their demand that the ban should not be retroactive Facing narrow ' but certain defeat when the motion came up for a vote, the Christian Democrats boycotted it. The motion was carried by 244 votes to one. but the

Speaker ruled that the number of deputies voting was five short of a quorum, and he closed the session. Later, when the ban became effective at midnight, the Social Democrats said they planned no further steps.

Dr. Adenauer had flown back from his holiday in Italy for the dramatic debate. He moved freely among the Free Democrat deputies in a final bid to win their support but failed to change their minds.

Russia will now have to look elsewhere for the 163.000 tons of piping it had been promised before the American-instigated North Atlantic Treaty Organisation call for an embargo In East Berlin, the news agency. A.D.N.. said it was a “flagrant breach" of contracts and “a pyrrhic victory tha' will damage not the Soviet Union but the West German economy " The minister at the Ameri-

can Embassy in Bonn, Mr Brewster Morris, called on the chairman of the Free Democratic Party (Mr Erich Mende), and is believed to have given him the United State? Government’s views on the ban. Later, Mr Erich Ollenhauer. the Social Democratic Party leader, issued a statement saying: “The Christian Democrats have today gone to unprecedented lengths in their disrespect of Parliament. In order to avoid defeat, they have escaped by a policy of obstruction.”