Warsaw Pact Leaders Split on Germany : Europe: They fail to agree on military future of a reunified nation. Doubt is cast on the political effectiveness of the one-time bloc.

In the first test of the alliance since last year’s round of East European revolutions, Warsaw Pact foreign ministers differed fundamentally here Saturday on the crucial issue of an acceptable future military status for a united Germany.

At a meeting on the eve of East German elections intended to clear the way for reunification, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia all rejected Soviet arguments that the unified nation must be neutral. They argued that European security would be better served for now, at least, if a united Germany were part of the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as West Germany already is.

Ministers stressed that their hastily arranged, one-day session was meant to be “consultative” only and that no formal agreements or even an official communique had been anticipated.

Still, the extraordinary gap in the Warsaw Pact members’ positions on Germany cast doubt on prospects that the one-time tool of Soviet regional hegemony can be transformed into an effective political forum, even for long enough to devise new European security arrangements to replace the pacts of the Cold War.

“In some way we are seeing here the end of this whole institution,” one European diplomat said.

Last year’s revolutions overthrowing Communist regimes throughout Eastern Europe had long ago put a question mark over any remaining military value in the alliance. But the Soviets, who reportedly initiated Saturday’s meeting to discuss what they consider the inevitable reunification of East and West Germany soon after today’s East German elections, had apparently hoped to demonstrate that the Warsaw Pact could still function as an effective political counterweight to NATO.

Czechoslovak sources said that while the basic disagreement over Germany in NATO was well known, it had been hoped that the ministers might at least agree on a statement stressing the desirability of maintaining Soviet forces in what is now East Germany for some time after reunification.

In fact, however, a terse press release, which was the only joint statement issued after the session, made no mention of the point. The formal, six-paragraph document said only that the ministers had “exchanged views” on issues related to German unity and future European security and that they had met in a “businesslike, open and constructive atmosphere.”

Czechoslovak Foreign Minister Jiri Dienstbier told reporters later that while the ministers agreed on the need for further consultations, no schedule of future meetings has been set.

He stressed, however, that Czechoslovakia and other newly liberated states of Eastern Europe see benefit in maintaining at least the shell of the Warsaw Pact to continue European disarmament negotiations and to serve, along with NATO, during the transition to new continental security arrangements free of blocs.

Members of the Warsaw Pact are Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Soviet Union.

According to an official text of his remarks, Dienstbier proposed to his Warsaw Pact peers that new security arrangements start with the creation of a European Commission on Security modeled after the existing European Economic Commission. The new commission would be backed by a treaty committing nations “in the whole region from San Francisco to Vladivostok” to settle disputes peacefully and to come to the defense of any member state that comes under attack by an aggressor, Dienstbier said.

“NATO and the Warsaw Pact would go on existing for some time, but their significance would gradually diminish” as the new system took root, the Czechoslovak official said.

Dienstbier described the new commission, which he said could be headquartered in Prague, as a “first step to the Europe we want to live in.” Next would be creation of an Organization of European States embracing the existing European Parliament and other “proven institutions of West European integration.”

The final phase of the process would be “a united European confederation of free and sovereign nations,” he said--a virtual United States of Europe.

A Soviet delegate said Dienstbier’s proposal had been “accepted with interest,” and Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry spokesman Lubos Dobrovsky, who was a member of his country’s seven-man delegation, said “some ministers” had supported it.

The United States and some of its West European allies argue that given NATO’s proven track record in helping to preserve the peace, there should be no rush to replace it with some untested new system, even if the Warsaw Pact collapses under the weight of its political divisions.

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze was philosophical about what would appear to be the disappointing results of the meeting from his perspective.

“I’m optimistic because we have a mutual understanding that . . . the forming of systems of all-European security and the construction of German unity must be synchronized,” he told reporters after the meeting. Given the consultative nature of the session, he added, “If there were any controversies, I considered them natural and normal.”

He said that implementing German reunification and settling the question of armaments on German soil is “a complex problem.”

“Some people say on this question it’s possible to keep (a united Germany) in the system of NATO,” he said. “We, for example, think it’s impermissible. But this is a question which requires further discussion and clarification.”

Referring to Moscow’s insistence that a united Germany be neutral, Poland’s foreign minister, Krzysztof Skubiszewski, commented: “Poland is not a partisan of that concept because neutrality would isolate Germany, and within a few years this would leave Germany on a road that would not be healthy for Europe.”

Asked if he would be happy to see a united Germany in the NATO alliance, Skubiszewski replied: “I don’t think it’s a question of happiness. I think it’s a question of realism.” But he stressed that it would be imperative in that case to find sufficient security guarantees to satisfy Moscow.

If Saturday’s meeting generated little in the way of concrete results, it was notable for an atmosphere very different from what Warsaw Pact meetings used to be. The ministers met in a glass-walled room with no guards at the door. Reporters stood outside and peered in through gaps in a thin curtain during much of the session.

The delegates ate in a public restaurant at the hotel where the meeting was held, and participants mixed freely with the press immediately afterward. Reporters were issued special passes for the session, but no one ever asked to see them, and there were no obvious security guards around.

It was apparently different for the participants, as well, compared to the old days when the Soviets rode roughshod over their Warsaw Pact allies. “It was very interesting to be able to openly and quite clearly speak our views to each other,” Dienstbier commented.