Baker Fails to Budge Kohl on NATO Missiles

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Secretary of State James A. Baker III attempted Monday to paper over their differences on the issue of NATO’s short-range nuclear missiles, but they succeeded mainly in keeping the disagreement open--and in raising the stakes for a planned alliance summit meeting this spring.

The United States had hoped that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would agree this year to the development of modern battlefield missiles as a key part of alliance defenses. But Kohl has thrown that plan into serious doubt.

Kohl Under Pressure

Kohl, who has been under increased political pressure because of German dissatisfaction with the slow pace of arms control efforts, said more clearly than before that he wants negotiations to reduce the number of battlefield nuclear weapons in Central Europe.

“I want that, as a German, because these are weapons that affect us very directly,” Kohl told reporters. “I don’t know whether everyone in NATO . . . also wants a negotiating mandate in this area.”

Baker has said the United States believes that negotiations to reduce the battlefield missiles are inadvisable because U.S. strategists consider them a key part of NATO’s defense against larger Soviet conventional armies.

But polls in West Germany, where Kohl faces a general election next year, show a large majority in favor of reducing or abolishing the nuclear weapons, most of which, if used, would explode on German soil.

Both Baker and Kohl attempted to minimize their differences over a closely related question--the U.S. desire for an early NATO decision to build modernized short-range missiles--but they acknowledged that the issue has not been solved.

“We agreed that our discussions on this matter will continue,” Baker told reporters after meeting with Kohl for almost two hours. “There is a commitment to resolve this through further discussions and negotiations. It would be in our view preferable if the decision could be made at the next summit.”

“This was not a decision meeting,” Baker added.

NATO’s short-range nuclear missile, the Lance, has a range of 70 miles. The United States has been seeking a decision to build a new version, with a range of about 150 miles.

Decision After Election

But Kohl opened the question of modernizing the short-range force last week by telling a British newspaper that there is no need to make a decision until 1991 or 1992, after his 1990 election date.

On Monday, Kohl retreated slightly from that position. Aides said his mention of 1991 or 1992 referred to a decision to deploy new missiles. They suggested that a decision to modernize “in principle” could be made at the spring NATO summit.

The timing is important to the Bush Administration in part because Congress may balk at spending the money to build a new missile without clear approval from the allies.

The effect of Kohl’s position on both nuclear missile issues--negotiations with the Soviets and modernization--may be to throw the problem into the laps of President Bush and other alliance leaders when they meet at the NATO summit, tentatively set for the last week in May.

The summit will be charged with producing a new statement of NATO’s objectives in both military defense and arms control, an exercise officials call “the comprehensive concept.”

U.S. and European diplomats will meet during the next three months to seek a face-saving compromise for all sides, officials said.

Some of Kohl’s statements over the last week appear to put him squarely on both sides of the issues--both skeptical of the need for modernization and then, when meeting with Baker, devoted to preserving NATO’s defenses.

Baker said Kohl expressly authorized him to announce that West Germany still endorses a 1988 NATO statement that called for modernization of both nuclear and conventional forces.

“I have found out that he was not backing off prior positions,” Baker said.

Kohl’s signals on negotiations, however, seemed to embolden other U.S. allies to express their own interest in reducing short-range nuclear arsenals.

“Negotiations could lead to a result which does not make modernization necessary,” Norway’s Foreign Minister, Thorvald Stoltenberg, told reporters after meeting with Baker in Oslo.

Behind the apparent disarray in the alliance, U.S. and West German officials said, is increasing European optimism about negotiations with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev--a sentiment fueled by Gorbachev’s decision to withdraw six tank divisions from Eastern Europe.

Baker and other U.S. officials maintain that in East-West relations, Gorbachev is largely reacting to a Western agenda--but they acknowledge that the Soviet leader has made it appear, at least, that he holds the initiative.

“There is just an attraction, an intriguing quality to Gorbachev,” said a senior State Department official traveling with Baker. “You have to answer somehow--but we have no answers.”

Baker, who is at the midpoint of a weeklong, 15-country blitz of the NATO countries, visited Denmark and Norway on Monday before returning to West Germany.

He is scheduled to touch down in Turkey, Greece and Italy today, then to fly on to Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and France before returning to Washington on Friday.