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PAGE 12
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, AUGUST 17, 1984
after all an eminent Frenchman in the 1950s who remarked: "J'aime
tellement l'Allemagne, je suis heureux qu'il y en a deux." ("I'm
so fond of Germany I'm delighted there are two.") ...
From the Russian viewpoint, it is a case of a once tolerated
flirtation which has got out of hand. Control of East Germany
has always been the
ill
to Moscow's ability to manipulate the
mood of West Germany, in the pursuit of its long-term goal�
luring Bonn free from NATO.
From early 1983 on, on the instructions of Yuri Andropov the late
Soviet leader, and with the full agreement of Herr Honecker, the
siren song was duly sent forth. The bait of better relations
with the East would be used to increase opposition within West
Germany to the planned deployment of new NATO nuclear missiles.
Despite that, the missiles were approved by the Bonn Parliament
in November 1983. But by then East/West German affairs had ac
quired a momentum of their own which a policy vacuum in Moscow,
as Mr. Andropov slipped towards death, did nothing to impede.
A first loan of OM 1 billion had been agreed in the summer of
1983: even the Soviet walkout from the Geneva arms talks, in
retaliation for deployment, scarcely interrupted the great
thaw.•..
East Berlin needed Western hard currency to help reduce its debt
and press on with economic overhaul; the centre right coalition
in Bonn under Chancellor Helmut Kohl could point to its inner
German policy as an indisputable success at which few could
cavil. Trade between the two Germanys jumped 8 per cent in 1983,
far faster than West German trade as a whole.
The permission
12.!; �
unprecedented 27,000 East Germans to emi
grate to the West 1n the first six months of 1984 also served the
interests of both sides. The deal enabled Herr Honecker to...
rid himself oftroublesome opponents of the regime.
The East
Germans also received payment from Bonn for the emigres..•• Then
on July 25 came the announcement of a second credit, this time
for OM 950m••••
Whatever their innermost leanings, officials here accept realis
tically that reunification is a dead issue--at least until the
two blocs are dissolved.
True Chancellor Kohl is fond of saying that partition "is not the
final word of history." But until such time as history permits,
the emphasis remains on "doing what is feasible," to make divi
sion more tolerable in human terms. East and West Germany, in
the words of spokesmen for both, have a Verantwortungsgemein
schaft, a "community of responsibility," to see that no war ever
again starts on German soil•..•
But Moscow sees the problem in different terms, indeed almost as
a mirror of the problem of West Germany in the eyes of the Atlan
tic Alliance. The West fears that Bonn might yield to ancestral
tugs from the East and slip away into a neutralist yonder: Moscow