German Trip OKd for Gorbachev : Russia: Yeltsin acts to break embarrassing stalemate over court testimony. Former Soviet leader will attend funeral for Willy Brandt.
MOSCOW — Prodded by President Boris N. Yeltsin, the Russian Constitutional Court agreed Tuesday to allow Mikhail S. Gorbachev to get a passport so the former Soviet leader may attend a state funeral in Germany.
It was the most encouraging sign yet that the two men have reached an understanding breaking the internationally embarrassing deadlock caused by Gorbachev’s refusal to appear in a case involving the Communist Party’s checkered past.
Court Chairman Valery Zorkin announced that the court’s summons to Gorbachev, Soviet Communist Party general secretary from 1985 to his resignation after the attempted coup by party hard-liners in August, 1991, was still in force. But he said that a travel ban imposed Oct. 2 on Gorbachev, after he declined to testify, was being lifted “on humanitarian grounds.â€
That will allow Gorbachev to attend the funeral on Saturday of former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, whose Ostpolitik, or overtures toward the East, led to a dramatic improvement of relations between Moscow and Bonn, and between the blocs in general.
Yeltsin had sent a letter to the court earlier in the day asking that Gorbachev, esteemed by many Germans, be allowed to attend the funeral services, Yeltsin’s press service announced.
“The sign of understanding on the part of the Russian president does not relieve Mikhail Gorbachev of the obligation to fulfill his civic duty to the Russian Constitutional Court,†Yeltsin’s press service stressed in a dispatch carried by the Itar-Tass news agency.
There was probably a good deal of political calculation in Yeltsin’s act. Gorbachev is hailed in Germany for giving the green light to German reunification; to treat him like a criminal could only harm Yeltsin’s reputation in the land that is Russia’s No. 1 Western trading partner.
German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has made it known that he wants Gorbachev to attend Brandt’s funeral. And Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev said Britain’s Prime Minister John Major and Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd had brought up Gorbachev’s “situation†in recent talks in London.
The Moscow-based think tank that Gorbachev now heads quickly labeled him “Russia’s first political refusenik†after the Foreign Ministry impounded his passport on instructions from the high court. To add to the humiliation, Yeltsin last Wednesday booted Gorbachev out of the Moscow building that housed his foundation.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky told a news briefing that the impounding of Gorbachev’s documents will cease as soon as instructions arrive from the court.
But apparently Gorbachev is not getting back his old passport, valid for travel anywhere. According to Itar-Tass, the consular service gave him a passport only valid for the German trip, and authorities are assuming that “Gorbachev as a citizen, respecting the laws of his country, would abstain from other foreign trips.â€
Gorbachev also has spoken of going on a trip to Italy this week. But whether he fulfills that travel plan and what happens when he returns home from Germany remains murky. The summons to the former Soviet president is regarded by many Russians as a test of whether all citizens, no matter how distinguished, are finally to be treated as equals before the law.
Gorbachev counters that the case now being heard by the court--on whether the Communist Party acted illegally and Yeltsin had the authority to outlaw it--has been transformed into a pure spectacle that he cannot legitimize by appearing.
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