West German Major Party Leaders Dismayed by Local Coalition with Npd

Leaders of West Germany’s three major political parties expressed dismay over the coalition that two of the parties arranged with the extreme right-wing National Democratic Party in the north German state of Lower Saxony. The arrangement applies only to a single municipal election campaign in Lower Saxony, but it has caused considerable embarrassment to Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger’s Christian Democratic Union, whose Lower Saxony branch Joined In the agreement, and to the Liberal Free Democrats, which also is involved. The arrangement evoked a sharp attack on both parties from Egon Franke, spokesman for the Social Democrats, the CDU partner In the national coalition government.

CDU leaders have long insisted that they would never work with the NPD which is regarded by many Germans as a neo-Nazi party. Dr. Karl Radke, the CDU spokesman, said here today that the matter was one of great concern and the party had to consider whether to take disciplinary action against the members in Lower Saxony. Willy Langeheime, the CDU chairman of the Lower Saxony parliament, told a radio interviewer today it was regrettable that an agreement with the NPD had been made. But he said it was an isolated case and that the party leadership could not have acted to prevent it because they were not informed in time. CDU members meanwhile were trying to determine whether anything could be done to annual the agreement though no move was made to expel the party members who engineered it.