Germany Can Pick Own Allies, Bush Says : Europe: The unified nation ought to be fully sovereign, he tells Kohl. Moscow has objected to NATO membership.

President Bush, preparing for the U.S.-Soviet summit in two weeks, told West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl on Thursday he would insist that a unified Germany must be allowed to choose its own security alliances.

Washington and Moscow have been at odds about whether a united Germany should be a full participating member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“Forty-five years after the end of the war there is no reason that a unified, democratic Germany should be in any way singled out for some special status,” Bush said after more than three hours of talks with Kohl.

“Germany should be fully sovereign, free to chose its own alliances and security arrangements,” Bush declared.

Kohl, before departing to return to Bonn, where finance ministers of East and West Germany today will sign a treaty on currency and economic union, said: “A united Germany will remain a member of the North Atlantic alliance.”

He said the changes in Eastern Europe, however, required that NATO put more emphasis on political rather than military needs.

Bush intends to discuss the German issue during his May 30-June 3 summit with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, hoping to soften the Kremlin’s opposition to allowing a unified Germany to be part of NATO.

The Soviet Union has said that the security status of a united Germany could be settled after unification. West Germany, backed by the Western allies, has insisted that all questions related to German sovereignty be resolved before union.

“Everything’s going very well,” Kohl told reporters while posing for pictures with Bush at the start of their meeting in the Oval Office.

Kohl declined to predict whether East and West Germany would be able to unite before the end of the year.

“Nothing’s been speeded up. It’s just normalcy,” Kohl said of unification efforts.

Meanwhile, in Bonn, West German officials disclosed the extent of East Germany’s debts, predicting that the country’s budget deficit would reach $20 billion in the second half of 1990 and $32 billion next year.

Bush said he and Kohl agreed that the rights of the four World War II victors--the United States, the Soviet Union, France and Britain--should be terminated at the time of German reunification.

“A united Germany should have full control over all of its territory without any new, discriminatory constraints on German sovereignty,” Bush said.

In remarks on the South Lawn of the White House, Bush said he and Kohl agreed that U.S. forces should “remain stationed in the united Germany and elsewhere in Europe to continue to promote stability and security.”

On Tuesday, Kohl called for all-German elections soon. The move to elections by December or January is seen as a way to take advantage of the current popularity in East Germany of his Christian Democrats.

German unification takes its first official step forward today when East and West German officials sign a treaty making the Western mark the currency for all Germans starting July 1.

The disclosure of East Germany’s debt by West German Finance Minister Theo Waigel came after officials put the finishing touches on the treaty.

Waigel had spent weeks trying to pry out of East Berlin exact figures on the state of East Germany’s finances.

But Waigel told a news conference that all outstanding issues had been solved so that the West German mark could become legal tender in East Germany.

To tide East Germany over its transition to a free market economy, Bonn has announced a $70 billion unity fund.