Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 14, 1991                   TAG: 9103140482
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BERLIN                                LENGTH: Medium

EX-E. GERMAN HEAD IN SOVIET HOSPITAL

Defense lawyer Nicolas Becker said he tried to visit Honecker today at a Soviet military hospital outside Berlin, but was told the ousted communist leader had been taken to the Soviet Union.

The 78-year-old Honecker was suffering from "acute" medical problems, the Berlin lawyer was told.

Berlin prosecutors have charged Honecker with the deaths of would-be escapees over the Berlin Wall and across the now-vanished border between East and West Germany.

The mass-circulation newspaper Bild reported Honecker had been taken to the Soviet Union by Soviet military authorities because "only there can he be sufficiently treated medically."

"Honecker's health condition has taken a dramatic turn for the worse," the newspaper added.

Bild said its report about Honecker would appear in Friday's editions. It was sent to other news media in advance.

"We are checking out this report," said a spokesman for the federal government in Bonn. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

In an interview published in another newspaper today, Berlin's chief prosecutor said Honecker could be put on trial this year if the Soviets would turn him over to German authorities.

"I see good chances for that, if Moscow lets us carry out our arrest warrant," Dietrich Schultz told the Bonn newspaper Die Welt.

That was apparently based on the assumption that Honecker was still at the military hospital in Germany.

Last week, Berlin's highest court upheld an arrest warrant against Honecker, who was ousted in October 1989 during East Germany's peaceful revolution. That ruling led to the current push to get the case moving.