The Republican-controlled New York State Senate voted 54-2 yesterday to “urge President Reagan to cancel his planned visit to the cemetery near Bitburg.”
Senate Majority Leader Warren Anderson (R. Binghamton) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Marchi (R. Staten Island) were the only Senators voting against the resolution. Marchi joined other State Senators in denouncing the Nazi regime but said that President Reagan “deserves our prayerful consideration and moral support. The President should be guided by his own judgement.”
The resolution passed by the Senate was a watered-down version of a resolution introduced last week by Senate Minority Leader Manfred Ohrenstein (D. Manhattan). Marchi refused to put the orginal resolution on the agenda of his Finance Committee, which must approve all Senate resolutions before they go to the floor.
After conferring for more than two hours and negotiating with Democratic colleagues, the Republican majority allowed the milder version to be presented to the Senate.
SOME HARSH CRITICISM ELIMINATED
The Democratic-controlled Assembly adopted the original resolution on Monday but the Senate version eliminated some harsh criticism of the President. Removed from the original resolution were such phrases as, “It is an insult to those Americans who fell at their (Waffen SS) hands to pay homage at this cemetery” and “It is inappropriate to equate as ‘victims’ those Nazi soldiers who died on behalf of a tyrannic regime with the true victims … who struggled against Nazism and for the cause of peace.”
Also deleted were references to Reagan’s rejection of proposals to visit Dachau as “an insensitive desecration of the Jewish and non-Jewish martyrs murdered there,” and “the moral inappropriateness” of President Reagan’s plans to visit Bitburg.
TEACHERS OPPOSE REAGAN’S BITBURG VISIT
In a related action, delegates to the convention of the New York State United Teachers, voted unanimously expressing their opposition to the Reagan visit to Bitburg, and urging him to cancel it.
The 2,000 delegates suggested that the President instead visit, in addition to a Nazi death camp site, “the Museum of the Resistance housed in the Old Synagogue of Essen.” The union is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers.
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