Krenz Steps Down; Replaced by Gerlach

EAST BERLIN--Former Communist Party chief Egon Krenz resigned yesterday as East Germany's president, and a non-Communist took over as interim head of state for the first time in the nation's 40-year history.

The announcement was made on national television by the new interim head of state, Manfred Gerlach, the leader of the non-Communist Liberal Democrat Party. He said he will serve until Parliament elects a permanent head of state.

The Liberal Democrats were long allied with the Communist Party but have since said that they will no longer run in a Communist-led bloc.

Gerlach has been spearheading drives for reforms in East Germany and has been taking on an increasingly prominent role since the ouster of hard-line Communist Party leader Erich Honecker on October 18.

The country, whose political makeup is being shaped by the prodemocracy movement on a day-by-day basis, is now run by a 25-member committee of Communists who took over when the Communist leadership resigned Sunday.

A special party congress will decide on a new party leadership tomorrow.

The announcement of Krenz's resignation as head of state came in a one-sentence dispatch on the official ADN news agency.

Krenz has been virtually without power since stepping down as Communist Party general secretary on Sunday, along with the ruling Politburo and the entire Central Committee.

He had replaced longtime Communist leader Honecker in October. But Krenz, who was closely associated with Honecker's hard-line policies, had been the target of growing criticism within the party and among opposition groups.

Krenz had been president since October 24. The post is largely ceremonial.

Also yesterday, the government newspaper Neues Deutschland said the party may scrap its traditional structure of having a Politburo, Central Committee and general secretary to make a "radical end to structural Stalinism." As reform movements sweep through Eastern Europe, the hard-line policies of Stalinism have become a prime target for criticism.

Reform began in East Germany after Honecker was forced out following 18 years in power. Since then, a popular uprising and exodus of thousands of people to the West have forced the Communist government to open East Germany's borders and the Berlin Wall to allow citizens to travel freely.

The Communist Party also has given up its guaranteed monopoly on power.

In another development yesterday, ADN said that Manfred Seidel, the number two official in the government's Commercial Coordination office, had been arrested and was the target of a criminal probe.