Hope For A Reunited Berlin?

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32067, 15 August 1969, Page 20

Hope For A Reunited Berlin?

Dr Hiesinger said recently that he felt Moscow might be interested in arranging “a more secure, more “ orderly state of things in Berlin ”, This might have been more than wishful thinking. The West German Chancellor was speaking in New York after talks in Washington on East-West relations. Dr Hiesinger presumably had in mind the reference by the Soviet Foreign Minister (Mr Gromyko) to Berlin in his speech to the opening session of the Supreme Soviet on July 10. If Russia’s wartime allies, said Mr Gromyko, were to approach the question of the city, taking into account the interests of European security, they would discover on the part of the Soviet Union a readiness to exchange opinions with the object of eliminating now and .forever complications around Berlin. In the 20 years since the lifting of the Russian blockade of the city in May, 1949, the Russians have often broken the agreements reached with the Western allies, especially the agreement to facilitate “ the movement of persons and goods and the '* exchange of information between the Western zones “ aud the Eastern zones, and between Berlin and the “zones”. If, after 20 years of intransigence, the Russians are now contemplating a more co-operative policy, the reason will no doubt be found in Mr Gromyko’s cryptic reference to “the interests of “European security”. The Kremlin has hitherto concerned itself less with European security than with maintaining, at any cost, Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe. Why this new posture? The possibility that it is connected with the Chinese threat to Russia’s Far Eastern borders cannot be dismissed. Observers have suggested that in the event of a nuclear threat from Peking—which Moscow obviously fears—the Russians might well withdraw their objection to the restoration of German unity, even though this would mean the abandonment and disintegration of Mr Ulbricht’s republic. As long ago as 1954 a German scholar, Dr Wilhelm Starlinger, suggested that a conflict between China and Russia might eventually force Russia to loosen its hold on Eastern Europe and open the way once more for German integration. Dr Starlinger was thinking of war on a massive scale. A cold war might be not so very different in many of its side effects.