North Korea's Peaceful Deal

The recently negotiated settlement on North Korea's nuclear program is a victory for the cause of peace, and is precisely what President Eisenhower envisioned 40 years ago (``Reaction to a Reactor Recall,'' Oct. 26). Eisenhower established, through the UN, the Atoms for Peace program, under which nations that gave up nuclear weapons research and production would share in the peaceful nuclear technology developed by the US and other developed nations.

North Korea's decision to give up its plutonium production capability for more proliferation-resistant US light-water reactors is just such an arrangement. Trading energy and economic development for weapons of mass destruction can never be a bad deal. Our agreement with North Korea is a winning situation for everyone. Frank R. Bruce, Oak Ridge, Tenn.

PDS heads East Berlin government

The article ``Five Years After the Fall of the Wall, Few East Berliners Celebrate,'' Nov. 2, states: ``The eastern state governments are dominated by the Party for Democratic Socialism (PDS), the former East German Communist Party....''

However, the PDS has a power role in the state government in only one of the five eastern German states, Saxony-Anhalt. There, the PDS tolerates a minority state government led by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens.

Although the PDS was electorally the strongest party in East Berlin in the Bundestag elections of Oct. 16, it won 19.8 percent of votes cast in the area of the former German Democratic Republic, making it the third-strongest party in eastern Germany rather than the dominant one. Gene Frankland, Muncie, Ind.

Editor's Note: The quotation above was incorrect due to an editing error. It should have read: ``The government of East Berlin is dominated by the Party for Democratic Socialism.''