The World - News from April 7, 1985

East German leader Erich Honecker will make an official visit to Italy later this month, the East German news agency reported. Honecker’s visit will be his first to a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and was seen by diplomats in Bonn as an indication that Moscow, under new Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, has decided to renew efforts of closer ties between the Soviet Bloc and the West. Honecker will be returning a visit by Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi who went to East Berlin last summer.