GERMANY: Germany's reformed communist party was thrown into chaos yesterday after its leader was unmasked as a former spy for the East German secret police, the Stasi. Derek Scally reports from Berlin.
The name of Mr Lothar Bisky emerged from secret Stasi files, codenamed Rosenholz, that were in the possession of the CIA for the last 12 years until they were handed over to the German government earlier this month.
Mr Bisky worked under the codenames "Bienert" and "Klaus Heine" for 16 years and was praised by officials as a "trustworthy, ready-for-action comrade".
"Having a registration card is no proof of IM activity. What is understood by IM activity - obligation to keep certain rules and report regularly - that's not what I was," said Mr Bisky.
Mr Bisky had been suspected in recent years of working as an "unofficial worker" (IM) for the Stasi, but there was until now no proof. "In 1995 Mr Bisky said there was no codename and no IM registration. Both \ are now yes," said Dr Hubertus Knabe, a leading German historian and Stasi expert.
The revelation could have serious consequences for Mr Bisky, just three weeks after he was re-elected head of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). Three years ago he stepped down as leader of the party, the successor to the Socialist Unity Party (SED).
The revelation will be a stinging blow to the PDS, still trying to find its feet a year after the general election when it lost all but two seats in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag. "A new start for the PDS with a man who worked for [the Stasi] for 16 years is difficult to imagine," said Dr Knabe.
Earlier this week the new leader launched a programme to revitalise the party and rebuild its fading public profile.
Mr Bisky, a one-time film studies professor, served as head of an investigation into Stasi allegations surrounding Mr Manfred Stolpe, then state premier of Brandenburg and currently federal Transport Minister in Berlin. The two-year investigation cleared Mr Stolpe, but questions are now being asked as to how a former Stasi spy could chair such an investigation.
This latest revelation shows how the poisonous legacy of the Stasi continues to fester in Germany. As a surveillance organisation, it had no equal in history. It kept files on around one-third of East Germany's 17 million citizens and an estimated 1 in 68 East Germans worked for it.