WaybackWire

EAST BERLIN, Wednesday.—A committee of East Germany’s parliament has rejected the government’s draft travel law as too restrictive, the first time in the country’s 40-year history that a committee has thrown out a government bill.

The committee acted on Tuesday against the measure, proposed by Interior Minister Friedrich Dickel.

The draft would still have required exit visas and would have let East Germans travel to the West for no more than 30 days a year, The Washington Post reported. The Post said the exit-visa requirement was the main objection.

Baerbel Bohley, a founder of the New Forum opposition group, questioned the limit. “Why the restriction to 30 days?” she asked.

The law was meant to relax curbs on emigration and travel abroad at a time when, according to the Post, more than 4,000 citizens a day are leaving for the West.

WASHINGTON, Wednesday.—President Bush said the democracy movement in the Communist bloc has gone too far to be reversed, and he saw encouraging signs from East German leader Egon Krenz.

“I don’t think you can contain now the people’s aspirations for freedom by going back to totalitarianism,” Bush told a news conference on Tuesday.

Bush had earlier viewed Krenz as a hard-liner but said that view may have been premature. “Some of what he has said about political reform is quite encouraging,” he said.

The President said he was looking ahead to his meeting next month with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

After the Politburo shake-up, White House deputy press secretary Roman Popadiuk urged the new East German leadership “to enter into a dialogue” with the people. He said he hoped the new leadership was a step toward stable and evolutionary reforms.

EAST BERLIN, Wednesday.—Thousands of East Berliners marched past Communist Party headquarters on Tuesday while the party leadership met, chanting for free elections.

The Associated Press put the crowd at about 5,000.

Some marchers shouted “We are the people.” Others, addressing party leader Egon Krenz by his first name, chanted “Egon, we are the competitors.”

The few police outside the party building did not intervene, the AP reported.

BONN, Wednesday.—Chancellor Helmut Kohl told the West German parliament today that Bonn was ready to discuss a new dimension of economic aid to East Germany if its Communist Party gave up its monopoly of power.

In his report on the state of the nation in divided Germany, Kohl said the ruling Socialist Unity Party must also allow independent parties and give a binding promise of free elections.

“With this condition, I am also ready to discuss a new dimension in our economic aid,” Kohl said, according to the Associated Press.

Kohl told the Bundestag that more than 200,000 people had left East Germany for the West so far this year, calling these the latest figures. He described the exodus as a vote with the feet.

EAST BERLIN, Wednesday.—Western analysts see East Germany’s upheaval as an outgrowth of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s reform program and of a stalled economy, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The West German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin calculates that East German living standards are 50 percent below West Germany’s.

Many East Germans earn no more than $300 a month, the Tribune said, while a good pair of shoes may cost $110.

Carlo Jordan, leader of the opposition Green Network in East Berlin, described the shortages this way. “In the West, if you buy something, your friends ask you how much you paid for it,” he said. “Here, they ask you how you found it.”

EAST BERLIN, Wednesday.—East Germany’s opposition gave the leadership changes a cool reception, even as the government said it would formally recognize the opposition group New Forum.

“New names do not make a new policy,” said the Democracy Now movement, one of the chief opposition groups that have arisen in East Germany.

Sebastian Pflugbeil, a leader of New Forum, said of Tuesday’s Cabinet resignation: “This clears the way for discussion of a new electoral law, but it certainly is not enough.”

Jens Reich, a scientist and founding member of New Forum, was quoted by the Chicago Tribune as saying: “By broad reforms they could gain trust again.”

The Interior Ministry announced it would formally recognize New Forum as an association, United Press International reported. The group, until now outlawed, has not applied for recognition as a political party.

EAST BERLIN, Wednesday.—The flight of East Germans to the West went on despite the changes at the top of the party and government.

More than 50,000 people have reached West Germany through Czechoslovakia since Saturday, the Associated Press reported, and The Washington Post put the flight at more than 4,000 a day.

Rudolf Seiters, the West German minister who negotiates with East Germany on humanitarian matters, said: “We are facing a big problem.”

“I am convinced that the call for free elections will not cease,” Seiters said.