United Germany Won’t Leave NATO, Bonn Says : Europe: West Germans rule out neutrality. But no Western troops would be stationed in eastern sector.

BONN — West German officials, praising Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s support for eventual German reunification, said Wednesday that a unified Germany would remain in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher said there would be no NATO troops in the eastern sector of a unified Germany but added that “we don’t want a neutral Germany.”

Thus Genscher, the West German architect of detente with the Soviet Bloc, presented his answer to a question that has puzzled NATO officials: How might a unified Germany fit into the Western defense alliance?

Genscher’s view was supported by Michaela Geiger, foreign policy spokeswoman for Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democratic party.

“The option of a neutralized Germany is out,” Geiger said. “It’s conceivable that no NATO troops would be stationed on the territory of present-day East Germany--maybe even that a limited contingent of Soviet troops could stay there for a certain transition period.”

About 380,000 Soviet troops are now based in East Germany.

A Question of ‘When’

Egon Bahr, foreign affairs expert of the opposition Social Democrats, said: “There are no longer any differences between our’s and the Soviet general secretary’s views. It is no longer a question of if, but when, how and what form a unified German state might take.”

Gorbachev said Tuesday in Moscow, after meeting with East German Prime Minister Hans Modrow, that there is no longer any question about reunification. But he said he wants the timetable negotiated by the major powers, “not in the streets.”

Genscher, in response, said Wednesday: “It is undisputed that we will stay in the European Community. Just as undisputed is that (we) will remain in NATO.”

Later in the day, in a speech to the Protestant Evangelical Academy in Tutzing, Genscher said that NATO must make it clear that “whatever happens to the Warsaw Pact, there will be no possibility of an expansion of NATO territory closer to the Soviet border.”

Genscher said the Western allies must understand that German reunification holds no dangers to “Soviet security interests.” He suggested that as conditions change in Eastern Europe, the military role of NATO and the Warsaw Pact will change, too, with reductions of forces on both sides.

In another development involving the issue of reunification, Kohl was reported to be angered by an exchange of messages with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

West German newspapers suggested that a rift had opened between Bonn and Jerusalem over Shamir’s refusal to withdraw a remark made last November in a U.S. television interview that a unified Germany would pose a “deadly danger to Jews.”

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung of Munich said Kohl was infuriated by Shamir’s comment. It said that Shamir told Kohl in a letter that as prime minister of the Jewish state, he has the right to “express our doubts and our fears.”

He was further quoted as saying that “the majority of the German people chose to kill millions of Jews; Germans might try again if they have the opportunity.”

Damage Control

Some of Kohl’s advisers were trying to minimize the differences, denying that any breach had occurred between the two countries, which have maintained close ties despite the fact that in the 1930s and 1940s, Nazi Germany systematically killed 6 million Jews.

Shamir was quoted in West German newspapers as saying that “our people would be in a different situation” if it had not been for the Holocaust.

Kohl, according to press accounts here, is particularly angered by Shamir’s statement because he is basing his reelection campaign on the reunification matter. He reportedly said in a letter to Shamir that the prime minister was damning a whole new generation of Germans. Modern Germany, Kohl said, is a democratic state as much entitled as any other to determine its own fate.

According to the Munich paper, Shamir replied that while the opening of the Berlin Wall was greated with euphoria, he questioned “what the end result of the present wave of enthusiasm and emotion will be, least of all for the Jewish people.”

It quoted a close adviser to Kohl as complaining: “Israel is standing constantly at our door with various offers of cooperation, which cost something. But people cannot want closer cooperation and keep kicking our shins.”