Kohl Questions U.S. Space Defense Plan

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl on Wednesday joined a rising European chorus questioning President Reagan’s plans for a space-based system to defend against nuclear attack.

Key West European allies have from the start expressed reservations about deploying such a system, nicknamed “Star Wars,” although they have cautiously endorsed the research phase now under way.

However, Kohl, British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe and West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher in the last five days have expressed these doubts more clearly than before.

That the comments were all made in formal, prepared statements adds to their impact.

Speaking at the annual convention of his Christian Democrats in the Ruhr industrial city of Essen, Kohl stressed that existing alliance strategy should remain unchanged as long as no effective alternative exists.

“And let me add, the more success there may be in Geneva in reducing offensive nuclear weapons in both East and West, the more superfluous it could become to station space weapons,” he said.

Kohl’s remarks echoed those in a position paper issued by Genscher on Tuesday.

Although that paper did not specifically mention the space-based defense plan, Genscher’s remarks made it clear that he was cautioning against embracing the concept too quickly.

‘High Moral Goal’

“As long as there is no better strategy for the prevention of war, the (existing) strategy of flexible response must remain unchanged,” he wrote. “Nothing, but nothing must happen that endangers this high moral goal.”

The remarks reflected the West German concern that lack of U.S. negotiating flexibility on the space weapons issue could endanger progress in other areas at the recently resumed Geneva disarmament talks.

Like other members of the Atlantic Alliance, West Germany fears the space defense concept could also decouple the alliance if it should end up providing full protection for the United States against long-range strategic missiles but leave Europe vulnerable to shorter range missiles and conventional ground attack.

The most outspoken European criticism was delivered by Howe last Friday in a speech before the Royal United Services Institute in London. Howe compared a space-based missile defense to the supposedly impregnable Maginot Line, which was built by the French to deter German aggression in the 1930s but proved useless in halting the Nazi invasion of France in 1940.

“There would be no advantage in creating a new Maginot Line of the 21st Century, liable to be outflanked by relatively simpler and demonstrably cheaper counter-measures,” he said. “Even if the research shows promise, the case for proceeding will have to be weighed in the light of wider strategic implications of moving down the defensive road.”

Howe further cautioned that Reagan’s $26-billion research program should not be permitted to “acquire an unstoppable momentum of its own, even though the case for stopping may strengthen with the passage of years.”

Moscow, far more fearful of the possibility of space-based defenses than of a renewed offensive nuclear weapons race, is expected to try to encourage European opposition to U.S. space defense plans to gain concessions at the Geneva talks.

The normally reserved Times of London reacted hotly to Howe’s comments, claiming that they “may have done untold damage to the cohesion of the Atlantic Alliance at a critical juncture of renewed East-West negotiations.”

Said the newspaper of Howe’s speech: “It was mealy-mouthed, muddled in conception, negative . . . ill-informed and, in effect if not intention, a ‘wrecking amendment’ to the whole (space defense) plan. In the circumstances of Geneva, it might more appropriately be described as ‘the Gorbachev amendment.’ ”

Both the British and West German governments have offered guarded support for the research program, in part because they expect to add to their own technological knowledge through direct participation in it, partly because they hope to exert some influence over its direction.