Germany's former communist party is planning to condemn the building of the Berlin Wall and apologise for those killed while fleeing to West Berlin.
The PDS will use the 40th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall next August to "resolve the guilt that has built up", according to party spokesman Mr Hanno Harnisch.
However, he said the announcement would not be "an act of contrition, but rather an acknowledgement of the wrongs of the past".
Ms Petra Pau, the leader of the PDS in Berlin, described the 1961 decision to build the Berlin Wall - officially known as the "anti-fascist protection wall" - as "a further nail in the coffin of freedom in East Germany". "Socialism that could only develop behind walls is no alternative to other political models," she says in today's edition of news magazine Der Spiegel. "Whoever justifies the building of the Berlin Wall has to explain why it was increasingly used against the citizens rather than against the supposed western enemy," she adds.
The planned announcement is another step by the PDS to cleanse itself of the sins of its political forerunners. Last week the party formally apologised for forcing the Social Democrats to merge with the communist party in 1946 to create East Germany's Socialist Unity Party, the SED.
The Social Democrats gave a grudging welcome to this statement of regret and said yesterday that the announcement planned for August would be "an important step for the PDS". However, they continued to rule out power-sharing with the PDS on a federal level.
The PDS remains optimistic about its long-term prospects. In reality the SPD needs the former communists if it is to capture eastern states from the Christian Democrats.
