Two members of the West German government disagreed today on how to cope with the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party. Herbert Wehner, Minister for German affairs, said that prohibition of the NPD would be a legitimate measure, adding that it was vital that the terrible horrors of the Nazi regime would not recur. But a few hours later, Kal Uwe von Hassel, Minister for Refugees, said he opposed banning the NPD, declaring that the only way to deal with the party was through political discussion.
Political observers here speculated that the Federal Government was taking steps to ban the NPD whose increasingly anti-democratic statements and nostalgia for the Hitler era are causing embarrassment at home and abroad. But a spokesman for the Interior Ministry would not confirm that a formal motion to ban the NPD was being prepared by the Constitutional High Court in Karlsruhe.
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