U.S. Concerns Growing That a United Germany May Bolt From NATO : Diplomacy: Washington courts an East German politician. He favors a new security system.

A little more than four months ago, the Rev. Markus Meckel was summoning dissidents to meetings in dank church basements in East Germany, planning nonviolent marches in hope of spurring his country’s Communist regime toward reform.

This week, the soft-spoken Lutheran minister got Washington’s version of the red carpet treatment as he was bustled from plush offices at the State Department to elegant reception rooms in the Capitol to tell an attentive Bush Administration and Congress what he plans for his country now.

“We are not used to this kind of thing,” mused the bearded Meckel, now vice chairman of East Germany’s fledgling Social Democratic Party, as he blinked into the lights of a television camera crew.

Meckel’s sudden prestige in Washington stems only partly from the fact that he may turn out to be East Germany’s new foreign minister if his party comes out on top, as forecast, in the country’s first free elections March 18.

More important, it reflects a new surge in concern among U.S. officials over whether a reunified Germany will want to remain a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the military alliance that has been the cornerstone of U.S. strategy in Europe for 40 years.

The Bush Administration and the West German government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl have publicly agreed that the new Germany will stay solidly in NATO--even though some Soviet troops may still be stationed on East German soil.

But not all Germans agree. Last week, Oskar Lafontaine, the probable candidate of the West German Social Democrats to run against Kohl in elections scheduled for December, said that the idea of a united Germany in NATO is “a mistake.”

And Meckel, the East German Social Democrat, told U.S. officials this week that his party wants to see “a new kind of European security system.”

“The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) cannot be a part of NATO the way NATO is today,” he said.

“We come from the peace movement,” he added, in a message that did not bring much reassurance to the Administration.

Both West German and East German leaders have assured U.S. officials that they will not push for an immediate withdrawal from NATO as reunification nears.

“We do not want to leave NATO, nor do we propose its dissolution,” said Horst Ehmke, a West German Social Democrat who also came to Washington this week to reassure the Administration.

But at the same time, he warned, the German public’s support for NATO membership--and for the presence of U.S. troops in Germany--is bound to shrink as the Soviet threat to Western security appears ever smaller.

“NATO is the structure we have,” a senior State Department official said. “We think it’s the best guarantee of continued stability in Europe.”

NATO’s military strategy has long rested on large deployments of U.S. and other allied forces in West Germany, the pact’s front line with the countries that used to be called the Soviet Bloc.

Nevertheless, U.S. military planners, recognizing the political realities, are quietly drawing up plans to defend the alliance with much smaller numbers of U.S. troops--and even with a Germany outside of NATO, a senior military official said this week.

The United States now has nearly 275,000 troops in West Germany. Last month, President Bush agreed to reduce that number to no more than 195,000 if the Soviet Union does the same on its side.

But senior U.S. officials acknowledged that if Soviet troop strength in Central Europe drops much below 195,000, the United States will be forced to follow.

Army Gen. John Galvin, NATO’s military commander, told a Senate committee this week that the proposed level of 195,000 U.S. troops is an absolute minimum if the alliance is to continue using its present strategy.

Some members of Congress have questioned whether Bush and Secretary of State James A. Baker III made a bad deal with the Soviet Union last month when they agreed to the 195,000 level, plus another 30,000 U.S. troops in other European countries such as Britain and Italy.

“What would happen if the price of (German) reunification demanded by the Soviets was the removal of all foreign forces, American and Soviet?” Sen. Wyche Fowler Jr. (D-Ga.) asked Baker in a Senate hearing. “Where would our troops go?”

Baker conceded that, under the U.S.-Soviet deal, all American troops in Germany would probably have to come home if a new German state asked them to leave. But Baker and other Administration officials dismissed that as unlikely.

“Our worry, frankly, is not that the Germans are going to ask us to leave, but that some folks up here (in Congress) are going to ask us to leave,” Baker said.

Former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger disagreed.

“The invitation extended by West Germany to U.S. forces is going to be reviewed by the German government and the opposition,” he said. “Sixty percent of the (German) public believes that neutrality is desirable. A majority believes all foreign forces should leave Germany.”

He said many Europeans quietly want American troops to stay in Europe to “watch the Germans. . . But what incentive is there for the Germans to provide us the real estate with which to watch them?”