U.S. Offers Plan for Early Reunification of Germany : Diplomacy: The process would be set in motion after March elections. Moscow seems to be dragging its feet.

Forty-five years after the end of World War II, the United States has proposed a process for the reunification of Germany that would begin almost immediately after East German elections March 18, senior State Department officials disclosed Monday.

West Germany, Britain and France have agreed to the plan, dubbed “two plus four” because it involves the two Germanys plus the four victorious powers of the war, the officials said.

The Soviet Union, including President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, has not ruled it out, the officials said, although statements by a Soviet spokesman here indicated that Moscow wants at least to slow down the momentum of events that seem barely controllable.

Complicating the Soviet reaction is the so-called Genscher plan for reunified Germany. Named for West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, it proposes that the single German state would continue to be a member of the NATO alliance although no North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces would be permitted into the part of the new state that is now East Germany.

The U.S. officials, who briefed reporters on condition they not be identified by name, said the U.S. concept began to take shape in December, soon after the Berlin Wall fell.

They declined to predict how soon the historic reunification could occur. One of the officials, when asked if it could come as early as November or December when a 35-nation European security conference is scheduled, said he had to “dodge that question.”

Under the scheme, which assumes that pro-unification politicians will win overwhelmingly in next month’s East German elections, the two parts of Germany would first begin consultations for “managing the internal issues” involved in reunification. These include the legal framework for a unified monetary system, transportation and other domestic policies and facilities.

After the Germanys take the lead, they will consult with the four powers--the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France--on the settlement of external issues such as security, membership in NATO and eventually a peace treaty that will finally restore sovereignty to a unified Germany. After World War II, the victorious allies never signed a peace treaty with Germany.

The American plan goes out of its way to allow the German states to take the first steps, the officials acknowledged, and emphasized that the three Western nations with continuing power in Germany “have no intention to use their legal clout” to effect any particular outcome of the deliberations.

The U.S. officials insisted that the plan is only “one possible mechanism” for reunification, which virtually all nations including the Soviet Union now accept as inevitable.

Moscow had initially opposed reunification, then insisted that it be a gradual process, but the U.S. officials said that Gorbachev, when he met with Secretary of State James A. Baker III in the Soviet capital last week, appeared to recognize the inevitability of unification.

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, who attended the Baker meetings in Moscow and was also here Monday, is still unenthusiastic about the rush to reunification. Asked about the issue, he told reporters that “although I understand the urge (of the Germans), I prefer that it develops in a gradual way.”

And rather than the Genscher plan, the Soviets want a reunified Germany to be neutral and demilitarized, he indicated.

“I’m not saying neutrality is the only way,” Shevardnadze said, “but it is the best way.”

His spokesman, Vitaly Churkin, expressed that sentiment in plainer terms: Moscow last week “rather categorically, in rather strong terms, rejected the notion of a unified Germany which would also be a member of NATO,” he said. “This formula of Mr. Genscher’s is not something we find appealing, it is not something we accept.”

Neither of the Soviet officials rejected the U.S. “two-plus-four” plan, but their comments about neutrality appeared to be inconsistent with the assurances of U.S. officials that the Kremlin remains open-minded on their approach.

“Based on our meeting with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze in Moscow, there is no question they were not dogmatic, not rejecting concepts,” said one senior U.S. official. “They did not commit themselves to a position, they were noncommittal, but there was no flavor of categorical rejection.”

“They went out of their way to avoid rejection of concepts, including having a unified Germany which is a member of NATO,” another U.S. official said.

Nonetheless, Shevardnadze and his aide were not the only sources Monday of Soviet dissent over a reunified Germany’s status. The East German news agency ADN reported that Gorbachev told East German leaders a reunited Germany cannot belong to NATO. ADN said Gorbachev told East German Prime Minister Hans Modrow by telephone that he had “clearly told” West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl that a “united Germany staying within the structure of NATO cannot be accepted.”

And in Moscow, Politburo member Alexander Yakovlev was quoted by Moscow Radio’s English-language service as saying that Soviet troops will remain in a united Germany if NATO forces stay.

“The Soviet troops will not leave a reunified Germany if the military units of the Western countries remain there,” Yakovlev reportedly said.

Kohl, who visited Moscow over the weekend, returned to Bonn and asserted that he had received the “green light” for unification from Gorbachev. The chancellor has said repeatedly that West Germany is firmly in NATO, and has rejected neutrality for a reunified Germany.

In Washington, President Bush told a press conference Monday: “We support Chancellor Kohl’s position that a unified Germany should remain a member of NATO. Let me also express my appreciation of Chairman Gorbachev’s statesmanlike view that decisions regarding German unity should be left to the people of Germany.”

The U.S. officials here said the victorious Western powers, as well as West Germany, recognize the anxieties that reunification will stir up among Germany’s neighbors, including the Soviet Union. They cited approvingly a recent Bonn statement that a unified Germany would renounce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.