Thatcher, Kohl Fail to Resolve Rift : Deployment of NATO Missiles Sharply Disputed

Chancellor Helmut Kohl and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher failed during a three-hour meeting here Sunday to resolve their differences over NATO’s deployment of short-range nuclear weapons, a split that has caused a crisis in the Atlantic Alliance.

Thatcher went so far as to say that Bonn’s approach--if carried through--would be “disastrous for the future of NATO.”

She said that pulling short-range nuclear weapons--those with a range of less than 300 miles--out of West Germany is “not an acceptable strategy” for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

And she insisted that the West German government should stick by NATO decisions, reaffirmed only last month, to modernize the aging, short-range Lance missiles now based in this country.

Kohl said Sunday that a West German decision on deployment of a Lance successor would have to wait until 1992--or well after the next federal parliamentary elections here.

At a joint news conference with Thatcher, he also avoided mentioning the recent controversial Bonn decision to call for early talks with the Soviet Union on reducing short-range nuclear weapons in Europe.

Britain and the United States are opposed to such talks as long as the Soviet Union and its East Bloc allies maintain their overwhelming superiority in conventional forces. The two allies insist that as long as the imbalance remains, nuclear forces are needed to deter any attack from the East.

But the Kohl government is eager to have East-West talks on short-range missiles get under way aside from any negotiations on conventional forces. The coalition government’s popularity has plummeted, according to opinion polls. Many West Germans and the opposition Social Democratic Party and the anti-NATO Greens party want all nuclear weapons out of Germany.

Hopes on Opinion Polls

By pressing for early talks on the short-range weapons, Kohl and his supporters hope to recoup their losses in the opinion polls.

Their eagerness for early talks was underscored by last week’s hastily arranged trip to Washington by Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Defense Minister Gerhard Stoltenberg, who sought in vain to induce the White House to go along with the German view.

Some NATO partners, including Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Spain and Portugal, support Bonn’s position.

Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper on Sunday quoted Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Andreotti as saying, “The West German position . . . is a proposal of mediation.”

The Bonn government’s precise position on eliminating the short-range weapons remains unclear.

Kohl said Sunday that he was not in favor of banishing all short-range missiles from West German soil--with the Kremlin doing the same in Eastern Europe. But Genscher recently refused to rule out the option of abolishing all short-range nuclear forces.

Genscher Pushes Views

In recent months, Genscher, who is also deputy chancellor, has pushed his views successfully within the governing coalition.

The British-West German summit meeting took place in this charming wine-marketing town in the Rhineland, about 55 miles southwest of Frankfurt, not far from Kohl’s hometown of Oggersheim.

Thatcher, in a gesture of solidarity, drank a glass of local white Riesling and pronounced it “excellent”--but that was about as far as the show of friendliness went. Thatcher sat stony-faced through their news conference, with Kohl looking ill at ease.

Kohl admitted that the two leaders are deadlocked over the issue, but he said that he hopes the conflict can be resolved by the time of a NATO summit meeting scheduled for May 29-30, marking the 40th anniversary of NATO.

That meeting, which will be the first of its kind for President Bush, is scheduled to produce an overall statement of future policy both about NATO’s forces structure and its relations with the Warsaw Pact nations.

But any such concise, coherent document now seems further away than it did a few weeks ago.

In his defense, Kohl pointed out the “special” West German problem: all of NATO’s short-range nuclear weapons are based on German soil.

Public Image Difficulties

However, Kohl’s aides said that he mentioned his current public image difficulties only peripherally during his conversations with Thatcher: Kohl’s three-party governing coalition and the chancellor personally are lagging badly in public opinion polls.

Kohl reminded Thatcher that she was in a “very European surrounding” Sunday, where after hundreds of years of strife, “people really yearn for peace.”

For her part, Thatcher told Kohl that short-range nuclear weapons are “vital” to NATO’s doctrine of flexible response.

She said that doctrine was decided on by all 16 NATO governments and implied that the West Germans would depart from it at their risk.

“Obsolete weapons do not deter,” she declared, as Kohl stared grimly ahead.

Basically, Thatcher and Kohl interpreted various NATO decisions and statements differently. The British believe their language specifies that nuclear weapons must be kept up to date, or modernized, and that progress in negotiations with the Warsaw Pact on conventional arms reductions must be made before talks on short-range forces can take place with the Soviet Union.

The West Germans are now saying that the NATO statements indicate that no decision on modernization is needed now and that talks about cutting short-range nuclear arms can be carried out at the same time as negotiations on conventional arms reductions.

In sum, Thatcher declared that “no two nations” could, on their own, alter NATO strategy--it is a matter for a consensus decision at the coming summit.

TROUBLED ALLIANCE: How serious is the quarrel? Page 10. Thatcher picture, Page 2.