W. Germans can feel pleased over Berlin

Press, 8 May 1978, Page 9

W. Germans can feel pleased over Berlin

NZPA-Reuter Bonn After five years of conatant bickering over West Berlin's right to expand its links with West Germany, Bonn and Moscow have returned to a compromise formula hailed as a big breakthrough in 1973.

But they failed to agree on how Berlin should oe included in three bilateral pacts —on legal help, cultural and scientific cooperation — that have been ready for signature for years. The Berlin issue, one of the toughest problems in Bonn-Moscow relations, played a big part in the talks m Bonn between West German leaders and the Soviet President (Mr Leonid Brezhnev) and the West Germans can be partly pleased with the outcome.

Although the Russians were adamant about the three accords, they agreed to include a pledge in the joint declaration that a 1971 fourPower agreement on Berlin should be “strictly adhered to and fully implemented.” To the outsider, it could look as if the two phrases mean much the same. For West Berliners they are worlds apart—and they have already been hailed by the

Bonn Government as vital for the future of Berlin.

The 1971 agreement between the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and the United States, says West Berlin, isolated 175 km inside Communist East Germany, may “maintain and develop” its ties with the West.

But it also lays down that the city, surrounded since 1961 by a Communist-built wall, is not a part of West Germany, and cannot be ruled from Bonn.

When Mr Brezhnev ended his first visit to West Germany in 1975 with the phrase, “adhere to and implement,” the West Germans leapt on the positive sounding second half of the formula as proof they could implement the part about development of ties. But the Soviet Union has since spoken almost exclusively of the more negative need to “adhere to” the pact —implying that its restrictions on West Berlin’s status must be observed.

The Russians often ignored the second half of the phrase, and the West Germans were known to be anxious to have the whole formula reaffirmed during Mr Brezhnev’s recent visit. To drive home their mes-

sage the Russians and the East Germans have protested more than 100 times against Bonn’s activities in the city which they claim have violated the pact—in particular the setting up of a Federal environment office there and meetings in West Berlin of political parties from Bonn. They have also threatened unspecified pressure on the city—East Germany controls all its land routes to the West—if the European Community goes ahead with plans to include Berlin in direct elections to a European Parliament The Bonn Government failed to get West Berlin written into the three outstanding agreements, but it was fully represented in a long-term economic pact signed alongside the main declaration.

With a reaffirmation of the 1971 pact in all its sections in their pockets, the West Germans were clearly happy. The agreement will be put seriously to the test in the autumn when the Mayor of West Berlin (Mr Dietrich Stobbe) takes over the rotating post of president of the Bonn Parliament’s Upper House—a post the Russians say the four-Power agreement forbids him to hold.