Bush, Kohl Fail to Agree on Missile Talks

President Bush and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl discussed their differences over the future of nuclear weapons in Europe on Friday, but there was no sign that Kohl persuaded Bush to agree to early East-West negotiations on limiting short-range nuclear missiles.

After their 20-minute transatlantic telephone conversation, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater told reporters, “The United States’ posture has not changed. It does not appear that the basis for agreement is there.”

But Fitzwater indicated there was no urgency in resolving the dispute that is threatening the harmony of the 40th anniversary summit meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on May 29-30.

“We would like to reach an agreement before the NATO summit, but if we can’t, it’s not the end of the world. We’ll go to the summit and we’ll discuss it there. If we don’t get an agreement at the summit, then we’ll go on and discuss it after the summit,” he told reporters.

The White House spokesman accused the Soviet Union of trying to divide the Atlantic Alliance. He said that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who last December announced a withdrawal of 240,000 Soviet troops from Soviet Bloc countries in Eastern Europe, “has made any number of proposals designed to convince people that there is no longer a threat from the Soviet Union.”

At the heart of the dispute between Bush and Kohl is West Germany’s proposal to delay until after that nation’s December, 1990, elections any decision on development of modern short-range nuclear weapons to replace the aging Lance missiles now a part of NATO’s arsenal. Kohl also wants to move ahead quickly with negotiations between NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact on reductions of all short-range nuclear forces in Europe.

The United States holds that NATO’s short-range nuclear arms help compensate for the Warsaw Pact’s superiority in conventional arms in Europe and does not want to talk about cutting them back until progress has been made in conventional arms reduction negotiations that are now under way in Vienna.

Even as Bush and other Administration officials were paying greater public attention this past week to the dispute with Bonn, suggestions have surfaced that the Washington and Bonn will find a way to put aside their differences, even if a permanent resolution is not achieved soon.

Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, predicted in an interview taped for broadcast today on public television that “the Bush Administration and the Kohl government will decide to move it off the table and there may not be agreement but it will not be a big rift.”

‘They’ll Agree to Disagree’

Sen. John Warner of Virginia, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a telephone interview, “They’ll operate on the standard practice: they’ll agree to disagree and move on to other things.”

And Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, with whom Bush met Wednesday, said Friday that she is confident the dispute can be resolved before or during the summit conference.

“Decisions will be made . . . that will be acceptable to the whole alliance and that will make us stand together on that date,” said Brundtland, whose government has supported the West German position.

Staff writers John M. Broder and Douglas Jehl contributed to this story.