DEPARTMENT OF STATE
GIST: FRG: BERLIN—GDR Has So Far Not Commenced To Implement Passport/Visa Requirements Against West Germans; Implementation Could Begin Tomorrow According to Reuters; Brandt Returns to Bonn
INR BRIEFING NOTE
TO: The Director, INR
DATE: 6-12-63
TIME: Reg Morning
COMMENTS CONTAINED IN INR BRIEFING NOTES ARE INITIAL AND TENTATIVE.
SOURCE(S)
Reuters 6-12
CLASS./CONTROL(S)
Unclassified
Reuters reports that Brandt cut short his official visit to Austria and returned to Bonn for urgent consultations on the East German measures announced yesterday.
East German frontier guards at Helmstedt on the Berlin autobahn did not demand visas from travellers to and from West Berlin. Border guards could not say when regulations would come into force but "travellers gathered" they would be required to produce visas tomorrow (June 13).
Reuters reports that allied diplomats conferred with FRG until late last night but that so far the expected protest statement has not been issued.
INR Comment: Mission Berlin initially reported that passport/visa regulations would take effect at zero hours on June 20 and then in a later message corrected it to zero hours on June 12. The Reuters reports suggests that even East Germans could not tool up fast enough to start enforcing the decree by midnight today. It may be, of course, that GDR wants to have a sample Western reaction to its announcement before commencing implementation.
Bonn 13163 6-12
13164 6-12
See Also Staff Summ
Embassy Bonn has cabled a draft text of a tripartite statement requesting Department concurrence. During the course of a lengthy tripartite meeting, German participants—who were speaking personally—indicated that FRG faces serious conflicting interests in dealing with new East German measures. Fenoff Dep Asst Secy Schm indicated that FRG countermeasures to interfere with GDR trade and travel would play into Ulbricht's hands and he noted that GDR measures seem aimed more at enhancing GDR status rather than at interference with travel per se
Link of Latest Move with NPT? Van Well who attended the meeting with allies yesterday, suggested that USG might wish to suggest in the UN that these latest GDR moves (with seeming Soviet concurrence) were not in accord with objectives of NPT. Embassy comments it expects considerable press comment along these very lines today.
INR Comment: In the aftermath of the earlier series of GDR restrictions, especially those announced against the travel of FRG officials to and from Berlin, Ecomin Schiller publicly espoused the idea of obliging Soviets to guarantee West German access as a condition of German signature on NPT. We had a report subsequently that Chancellor and other senior German Ministers turned down the idea.
INR OFFICE
REU
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5474
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Confidential
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FORM DS-1118
NW 31097 DocId:33061196 Page 13