2d Session SENATE 101-33 TREATY ON THE FINAL SETTLEMENT WITH RESPECT TO GERMANY OCTOBER 5, 1990.-Ordered to be printed Mr. PELL, from the Committee on Foreign Relations, REPORT [To accompany Treaty Doc. 101-20] The Committee on Foreign Relations, to which was referred the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany and its related Agreed Minute, signed by the United States of America, the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic, the French Republic, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Moscow on September 12, 1990, having considered the same, reports favorably thereon without amendment or condition and recommends that the Senate give its advice and consent to ratification thereof. I. PURPOSE On September 12, 1990, the Four Powers (the United States, France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union) from the Second World War, and the two Germanys (the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic), signed in Moscow the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany and a related Agreed Minute. The principal purpose is to terminate all remaining Four-Power rights with regard to Germany and to establish certain obligations, goals, and procedures that will govern a unified Germany's relations with the Four Powers. II. BACKGROUND With Germany's unconditional surrender at the end of the Second World War, the allies' major objectives with regard to Germany were to end the German capacity for war and to create a democratic German state. In agreements concluded during and im mediately after the war-at Potsdam and Yalta-the Four Powers decided upon the general division of territory in Eastern Europe and agreed to occupy Germany to achieve their objectives. The allies divided Germany into occupation zones. The Soviet Union occupied the part of Germany that became the German Democratic Republic; and the French, British, and Americans occupied zones that became the Federal Republic. In the late 1940's disagreements emerged between the Soviet Union and the three Western powers regarding Germany's borders, reparations, and the future political status of the German state. By 1947, any illusion of consensus on Germany had ended. As the battle lines of the cold war began to solidify, the Soviet Union balked at efforts to create a fully sovereign German state, and instead created a military defense against the West in the eastern part of Germany. In response, France, Great Britain, and the United States unified the three Western occupation zones, and the Federal Republic was founded in 1949. Later that year, the Soviet Union authorized establishment of the German Democratic Republic, to which it formally granted sovereignty in 1954. The three Western powers maintained their occupation regime in Germany until 1955, when they abolished the Allied High Commission that had administered the Federal Republic. In the same year, the Federal Republic of Germany became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In supervising this transition. however, the three Western powers explicitly reserved their rights with respect to Germany as a whole and to Berlin, to the setting of Germany's ultimate boundaries, and to participation in the conclusion of a final treaty. Separate wartime agreements governed the status of Berlin. As with Germany as a whole, Germany's former capital was divided into four occupation zones; governance was performed by an Allied Kommandatura (AK), comprised of the military commanders of the four allies. Since 1948, when the Soviet commander left the AK the Western allies have exercised their authority in the three western sectors, while the U.S.S.R. exercised these rights in the Soviet zone. Allied rights in Berlin fell into three main categories: access and free circulation; demilitarization; and security and intelligence functions. Throughout the postwar period, Berlin has symbolized the rift in East-West relations. The 1948 Berlin blockade, the 1953 Berlin uprising, and the 1961 erection of the Berlin Wall were landmarks in the evolution of the cold war. In 1971, to "promote the elimination of tension and the prevention of complications in Berlin," the Four Powers signed the Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin. The agree ment permitted greater civilian access, trade, and other communication between Berlin and the Federal Republic. Legally, Berlin has remained under the Four-Power status established by the postwar agreements. In the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, the Four Powers have sought to exercise their rights with regard to Berlin and Germany as a whole while returning full sovereignty to a united Germany. Although German unification remained a shared long-term goal of the FRG and the three Western powers, the process accelerated unexpectedly in the fall of 1989 with a peaceful revolution in the GDR and the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. By year's end, early unification appeared inevitable. In February 1990, acting to set an orderly course, the Four Powers and the two Germanys agreed in Ottawa on a framework for negotiation. Under the "two-plus-four" process, the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic would address the internal process of unification while the Four Powers discussed the external issues arising from the Second World War and its aftermath. According to the negotiating history presented to the committee, the six Foreign Ministers met four times after their February meeting in Ottawa: on May 5 in Bonn, on June 22 in Berlin, on July 17 in Paris, and on September 12 in Moscow. There were also 10 meetings of the two-plus-four at the subministerial level. Because of the importance of satisfying Polish concerns, the Foreign Minister of Poland participated in that part of the July 17 meeting which addressed the Polish border issue. The treaty was signed at the September 12 ministerial meeting in Moscow. On October 1 in New York City, the Four Powers met again to sign a temporary accord suspending their rights in anticipation of, and to allow for, German unification and the return of full sovereignty to Germany. This companion document to the full treaty was necessary as a transitional measure because the treaty will enter into force only after ratification is approved by the legislatures of the Four Powers and the united Germany. Just after midnight on the morning of October 3, the German flag was raised in the heart of Berlin at the site where the Berlin Wall had divided East and West for decades. With this symbolic act, the two Germanys became one. Later that day, Berlin and the Laender (states) of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) voted to become part of the existing Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). The GDR parliament merged with the Federal Republic's Bundestag, paving the way for German ratification of the treaty. III. MAJOR PROVISIONS The original Four-Power rights were outlined in the Potsdam agreement of August 1945. In the ensuing decade, the Four Powers relinquished some of these rights in the effort to create viable German states able to contribute to the competing NATO and Warsaw Pact alliance systems, but retained the right to station forces in Germany, to participate in negotiations concerning unification and a peace settlement, to determine a united Germany's final borders, and to exercise power over and determine the status of Berlin. Under the treaty, the Four Powers-the United States, France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union-terminate all remaining Four-Power rights and responsibilities with respect to Germany and Berlin. A united Germany, for its part, affirms in the treaty that its current borders are final and definitive; it further pledges to renounce aggressive war and any intention to manufacture, possess, or control nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons; to reduce its armed forces to a level of 370,000; and to adopt a constitution that reflects the principles of peace. The Soviet Union agrees, in an implicit ex change for a German commitment to maintain a relatively modest defensive force, to a total withdrawal by 1994 of Soviet troops from German soil. IV. COMMITTEE ACTION On September 26, President Bush transmitted the treaty and the related Agreed Minute to the Senate. Included in the President's package were: a letter of transmittal from President Bush, a letter to the President from Secretary of State Baker, and an exchange of letters between Baker, East German Prime Minister Lothar de Ma ziere, and West German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher with regard to claims against the GDR. On September 28, the committee heard testimony from State Department Counselor Robert Zoellick, the administration official most directly involved in the treaty's negotiation. The committee considered the treaty and its Agreed Minute at its business meeting on October 2, and by a vote of 19-0 ordered them reported favorably to the Senate for its advice and consent The yeas were: Senators Pell, Biden, Sarbanes, Cranston, Dodd, Kerry, Simon, Sanford, Moynihan, Robb, Helms, Lugar, Kasse baum, Boschwitz, Pressler, Murkowski, McConnell, Humphrey, and Mack. By the same vote, the committee also reported favorably a companion measure, a Senate resolution regarding the Baltic States, which is intended to be dealt with by the Senate in conjunction with the treaty. The text of this companion measure is as follows: Resolved, (a) The Senate finds as follows: (1) the President and Secretary of State have made repeated statements emphasizing longstanding United States policy to reject, and not recognize, the incorporation of the Baltic States by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; and (2) the President and his representatives have also stressed that this policy is in no way altered or compromised by the provisions of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany. (b) It is the sense of the Senate that the President should take all appropriate steps to ensure that the act of United States ratification of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, and the affirmation of the definitive nature of the borders of a unified Germany which the treaty entails, are not construed by any government to imply any diminution or compromise of United States determination not to recognize the forceful incorporation of the Baltic States by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. VI. COMMITTEE COMMENTS The Bush administration has sought prompt Senate consideration of this treaty, and the committee has complied in the belief that the treaty's purposes and terms are sound and that expedi tious action would reflect an appropriate degree of American support for this measure and all that it represents. The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany constitutes a landmark in international diplomacy. History in this century has been dominated by two overarching events-successive world wars in the first half and, throughout the second half, a great geopolitical rift that has threatened civilization on our planet. This treaty marks a closing point for both of these major events of the 20th century. The devastating wars between 1914 and 1945 were related, one leading inexorably to the next. Each involved the question of Germany, and neither war resolved it. This treaty, embraced by the German people and by their neighbors, should at long last provide a stable solution to the German question; its ratification will thereby, in a very real sense, mark a culmination of the First and Second World Wars. The treaty also marks the final chapter of the second predominant event of our century: the geopolitical rift known as the cold war, which has shaped all world politics since 1945. Throughout that period, Germany's division into two occupied, heavily armed, and ideologically opposed sectors has symbolized the confrontation between East and West. The treaty provides not only for German unification but also for crucial steps needed to bridge the EastWest divide. For American foreign and defense policy, too, the treaty is a landmark-the crowning achievement of the policy of containment in Europe. The essence of that policy was to provide a defensive shield behind which free-market democracy could take firm root, then to maintain that shield until such time as the Soviet Union was prepared to enter the community of democratic nations. At this point, the future of the Soviet Union itself remains uncertain. But the Kremlin leadership has, by most evidence, determined to allow the nations of Eastern Europe to chart their own course. United States policy in Europe has thus proven a magnificent success, of which Americans can be justly and permanently proud. The German people as well can be proud, for in the period since the horrors of Hitler the successor German generation has built a successful and prosperous democracy firmly attached to Western values and fully at peace with its neighbors. Earlier this year, as the prospect of German unification began to loom large, more than one committee member expressed concern that a unified Germany might revive territorial ambitions long held in check by superpower occupation. This concern was intensified by the seeming slowness of West German leaders to make unambiguous statements regarding a united Germany's borders. The committee therefore ascribes great importance to the fact that this treaty expresses-in paragraph 1 of article I-a solemn confirmation and commitment that the borders of the united Germany shall be confined to the territory of the two German states and that "the definitive nature of the borders of the united Germany is an essential element of the peaceful order in Europe." Finally, the committees notes that, although its text is comparatively brief, this treaty may be the most constructive arms control agreement in history. Not only does the treaty pledge a united Ger |