Reagan May Revise Bitburg Cemetery Visit

U.S. and West German officials are discussing the possibility of changing President Reagan’s participation in a controversial wreath-laying ceremony when he visits a German military cemetery May 5, White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan said Wednesday.

Another White House official, who requested anonymity, said that Reagan’s entire participation with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in the wreath-laying could be scrubbed. At the very least, he said, an alternative is being sought to “do it in a way that is not offensive” to Jewish groups and American veterans.

Will Honor Commitment

But Regan and other White House advisers said the President will honor his longstanding commitment to Kohl to visit the cemetery at Bitburg, where 47 soldiers of Hitler’s elite Waffen SS force are buried among approximately 2,000 World War II German war dead.

Reagan telephoned Kohl last Friday and tried unsuccessfully to be relieved of the commitment, made in Washington last Nov. 30, several White House officials have reported. The call was made in response to pressure from Jewish groups, veterans’ organizations and others to cancel the Bitburg ceremony. That pressure has increased over the last few days, and the Administration still is looking for ways to defuse it.

Open anger has spread within the Administration at the West German government for, as one official put it, “keeping the President in this embarrassing position.”

Germans a ‘Savvy People’

The official, speaking with reporters on condition that he not be identified, said: “The Germans are a sophisticated, savvy people. Why don’t they come up with a controversy-free place the President can visit?”

It was disclosed, meanwhile, that a senior State Department official last weekend sent what one presidential adviser described as “a scathing cable” to the U.S. Embassy in Bonn expressing the Administration’s unhappiness with the Kohl government.

The cable, which had White House approval, conveyed an Administration message, the adviser said, that “the Germans had better cooperate on the way we want to handle those events over there, that we’re not going to put up with any more of them telling us what we’re going to do.” The Reagan confidant, who asked not to be identified, praised it as “a very, very tough and good cable.”

A State Department aide said of the cable’s author, who requested anonymity: “He had a lot to complain about with the German government. They’re not very popular here right now.”

Reagan came under more pressure Wednesday to cancel the cemetery visit completely.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who was severely wounded in World War II, said he had “made it clear” to Reagan that it would be a mistake to visit the cemetery.

And Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) and six other senators told Ambassador Gunther Van Well of West Germany, according to Metzenbaum, that “if the President goes through with his planned visit to Bitburg, it could result only in a straining of relations” between the two countries.

Other Graves Reported

Former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt said in a New York television interview that the cemetery also contains graves of Nazi soldiers who massacred American prisoners of war as U.S. and British troops advanced on Germany.

“Contrary to international law, American POWs were killed,” said Brandt, who fought in the underground against the Nazis.

Regan reluctantly talked about the Bitburg visit in response to questions as he briefed reporters before the President’s nationally televised budget speech Wednesday night.

At first, he seemed to leave open the possibility that Reagan might cancel the cemetery visit. “At the current moment, as far as we can see for the foreseeable future, the President is going to Bitburg,” the chief of staff said hesitantly.

But he later said, “We are going to Bitburg--period.”

Regan disclosed, however, that Administration officials “have been in touch with the German government for the past three weeks” over possible alterations in the President’s May 1-6 visit to West Germany. And, he said, “We’re still discussing the ceremony at the cemetery.”