News In Brief

Soviets charge Bonn with interfering in E. Germany

Moscow is continuing its strong attacks on West Germany, accusing West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's government of interfering in the internal affairs of East Germany and encouraging ''revanchism'' - the recovery of lost territory by force.

The latest criticism, notable for its acidic language, appears in today's edition of Pravda, the official Communist Party newspaper, Monitor correspondent Gary Thatcher reports from Moscow.

''The Bonn leaders,'' it says, are ''unconditionally supporting the US course (of) confrontation with the Soviet Union and other socialist countries'' and are laying plans for ''undermining'' East Germany. Pravda accused West Germany of using ''an economic lever ... to break the postwar peaceful setup in Europe.''

In particular, Pravda lashed out at a major new loan package under which West German banks will lend $330 million (950 million marks) to East Germany in return for East Germany's easing of travel and emigration restrictions on its citizenry.

(From Bonn, Monitor correspondent Elizabeth Pond reports that East Germany is making a spirited defense of its foreign policy. In a major editorial yesterday, the Communist Party newspaper Neues Deutschland again described East German policy as enhancing detente and ''limiting the damage'' to East-West relations.

(The East German party Central Committee first used this phrase last November - signaling that it was not going to march in lock step with Moscow in making the West pay politically for the NATO missile deployment then beginning.

(Significantly, Neues Deutschland also stressed that, in bilateral relations, both East and West Germany ''are independent in their domestic and foreign affairs.'' The implication was clear that East German foreign policy would be made in East Berlin, not in Moscow. Last Friday, Pravda sharply criticized Bonn's (and by implication, East Berlin's) policy on East-West German relations.)

Chancellor Kohl rejected that criticism, saying it was an unjustified attempt to smear his government. Today's Pravda editorial is another sign of an exceptionally hard-line Soviet policy toward West Germany's leaders.