Kohl Criticized for Failing to Consult on Arms Plan

Several government conservatives said Thursday they have not committed themselves to Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s offer to scrap West Germany’s Pershing 1-A missiles if the United States and Soviet Union agree to eliminate their medium- and short-range missiles.

The conservative leaders also criticized Kohl for failing to consult with them on the plan before he announced his compromise Wednesday aimed at breaking the deadlock in superpower missile talks.

“There was no coalition agreement on the chancellor’s comments,” Theo Waigel, a ranking Christian Social Union parliamentary leader, said in an interview with the Bonn daily Die Welt.

Bavarian state premier Franz Joseph Strauss, the leader of the Christian Social Union, told reporters that Kohl should have consulted with his coalition partners before he announced his compromise.

“It is good that the chancellor demonstrates strong leadership,” Strauss said in a statement released in Munich, his state’s capital. “But it must be at the right time, with the right subject, and with the agreement of his friends. That was not the case in this instance.”

But the Christian Social Union leaders did not say the party would oppose the offer from Kohl, leader of the Christian Democratic Union.

The comments from the conservative leaders were a sign that further infighting could be expected in Bonn’s often fractious coalition government. But Kohl predicted Wednesday he would be able to obtain approval by his three-party coalition Cabinet.

The liberal Free Democratic Party, the coalition’s junior partner, has said the Pershing 1-As should not be allowed to block an arms agreement.

One key opposition leader, Oskar Lafontaine, the Social Democrats’ deputy chairman, said his party “welcomes the chancellor’s about-face” on the Pershing missile issue.