Kohl Suggests Reunification in Context of United Europe : Germany: The chancellor faces a tough election a year from now.

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, in a New Year’s Eve message to West and East Germany, called on Germans to seek unity in the coming decade.

In a short television and radio address, Kohl said Sunday that a reunited Germany, however, should come within the context of a unified Europe.

“German unity and the unity of Europe must be striven for together,” said the West German leader, who has previously called for a federation of the German states as a step toward reunification.

“Germany is our fatherland, Europe our future,” said Kohl in a speech that could be seen and heard in most of East Germany.

Kohl’s remarks seemed to give hope to those in East and West Germany who are in favor of reunification, while at the same time indicating to Bonn’s Western allies that West Germany is not rushing pell-mell into reunification.

Kohl faces a tough national election a year from now in which the issue of reunification is expected to figure strongly among the voters.

However, the Soviet leadership has warned against proceeding too fast toward German reunification, and this view has been supported by such Western European leaders as French President Francois Mitterrand.

The 1990s, said Kohl, could be the “happiest” of the century for Germans, who have lost two world wars during the period, because, he said, “it offers the chance of a free and unified Europe.”

Kohl called for a united Europe, although he did not spell out the precise nature he thinks it should take, saying that “the European Community must not end at the Elbe.”

The Elbe River forms part of the boundary between West and East Germany. It has traditionally marked the boundary between Eastern and Western Europe in the postwar division of the Continent into Communist and non-Communist halves.

The chancellor said the events of 1989, which included the ousting of East Germany’s Communist leadership, brought the West German ideal of reunification, as written into the West German constitution, much closer. He attributed this change, in part, to Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s program of glasnost , or openness .