ABSTRACT
As the crisis in East-West relations deepens, there is growing concern in the Federal Republic that the freedom of manoeuvre for West German diplomacy is being reduced. The high-flown hopes which, at the European level, manifested themselves in the Conference on Security and Cooperation (CSCE), were followed by the sobering experience of international tension before the practical and humanitarian potential of dtente policy had been fully exploited. In a Memorandum of the Federal Government regarding the Treaty on the Basis of Relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, the Government pointed out its success in making such stipulations which confer to the treaty a tangible substance to the benefit of individuals and will thereby gradually render the actual conditions more tolerable. The Federal Government has stated that the GDRs action contradicts the spirit of the Basic Treaty and the Traffic Agreement.
