The Russian Federation's justice minister said Monday in Bonn that his republic was determined to deport Erich Honecker but conceded that the former East German leader may be saved from expulsion.
Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev is fighting the republic's decision to expel Honecker. But because of a large shift in power from the Kremlin to Russia, it is unclear which government has the power to hold sway.The Russian justice minister, Nikolai Fyodorov, told reporters that authorities in his homeland will guard Honecker and that he could be returned to Germany in a "matter of days or weeks."
But he also said there was the strong possibility that doctors could declare the 79-year-old former communist boss too weak to travel. Earlier reports have said he is ill, perhaps with cancer.
Officials in the united Germany want to prosecute Honecker on charges of giving shoot-to-kill orders to East German border guards. From the time the Berlin Wall went up in 1961 until its fall in 1989, about 200 East Germans were killed trying to escape to the West.
Germany's justice minister, Klaus Kinkel, denounced Gorbachev's efforts to protect Honecker from prosecution.
"It would not be right to punish the little people and let the big ones run free," Kinkel told Deutschlandfunk radio.
Asked if there could be an attempt to move Honecker to another Soviet republic, Fyodorov said: "Legally that would not be allowed. But in politics banditry has sometimes occurred."
Fyodorov said Russian officials "are in the process of guarding and protecting Honecker," but he did not elaborate. "We know exactly where he is," Fyodorov said, but did not disclose the location.
Honecker is believed to be in a Soviet military hospital outside Moscow. He was spirited away by the Red Army from a Soviet military hospital outside Berlin in March.
Gorbachev told the German magazine Stern that putting on trial a fervent anti-fascist who spent a decade in a Nazi jail could amount to German "revanchism." Gorbachev also said Honecker was too old to stand trial.
Kinkel said Honecker's anti-Nazi past has nothing to do with the accusations against him.