NATO Summit Successful for Bonn, Kohl Says

Chancellor Helmut Kohl said Thursday that this week’s NATO summit was a success for West Germany despite opposition criticism of a compromise that limits negotiations on short-range nuclear weapons.

In speeches to the Bundestag, West Germany’s Parliament, Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher tried to put the best face on the compromise, in which they dropped demands for early negotiations and accepted strict U.S. terms for the talks that rule out banning the weapons.

Genscher, a staunch advocate of nuclear disarmament, went as far as to say that nuclear weapons are indispensable at this point.

“In Brussels, the federal government has achieved the central goals of German foreign and security policy in the agreement with its partners,” he said.

Echoing the language of the NATO compromise, Genscher added, “These nuclear weapons, as far as we can foresee, are indispensable, in order to permit the deterrence of war.”

Kohl told the Bundestag that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Brussels and President Bush’s visit to West Germany were each “a great success.”

“A success for the North Atlantic Treaty, for German-American friendship and not least of all for our country,” Kohl said.

NATO members agreed Tuesday to a final communique that included a new U.S. proposal to limit conventional forces and a compromise that provides for negotiations for a partial reduction of short-range nuclear forces after the first negotiated cuts in conventional forces are implemented.

Opposition leader Hans Jochen Vogel praised the Bush conventional disarmament initiative, but he sharply criticized the government for supporting the nuclear compromise.

“You can say whatever you want--this is not the big breakthrough in the field of short-range missiles,” said Vogel, who heads the Social Democratic Party.

Vogel also criticized the government for agreeing to a “partial” rather than total elimination of short-range missiles.