Gorbachev Warns West on German Role in NATO : East-West relations: He says Soviets will refuse to pull out troops if the reunited nation joins alliance. The threat is seen as a bargaining chip in the U.S.-Soviet summit.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev warned the West on Friday that if a united Germany is allowed to join the NATO military alliance, the Kremlin will refuse to pull out its troops and could backpedal in all negotiations now striving to end East-West confrontation in Europe.

Speaking at a news conference following talks with French President Francois Mitterrand, Gorbachev flashed the trump card he will doubtless play in summit talks with President Bush next week, making continued improvement in East-West relations in Europe conditional on respect for Soviet security concerns over the emerging status of Germany.

“I am raising these questions in such sharp terms not to try to scare all of you,” Gorbachev told Soviet and foreign reporters at the Foreign Ministry press center. “I am saying this for one purpose: We must hold together, bearing in mind the interests of the Germans, the Europeans and the entire world community.”

As the fusion of NATO-member West Germany and its Warsaw Pact neighbor East Germany nears, the Kremlin wants the resulting state to belong to both defense alliances, calling that a safeguard of the European balance of power.

The Bush Administration, however, favors NATO membership alone, as do the leaders of both Germanys, although they differ on what character and purpose the alliance should have.

Were Germany to opt to join NATO alone, Gorbachev said, “what should we do then about all the negotiating processes, including the European process--the CSCE process, the Vienna disarmament process? Then we must take a fresh look at whether we should pursue the same policy, whether we should base it on the same approaches.”

(The CSCE is the 35-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, an outgrowth of the so-called Helsinki Accords. Separate talks on reducing conventional forces in central Europe are being held in Vienna.)

Gorbachev scoffed at the possibility that NATO countries, now proclaiming their respect for the will of a sovereign Germany, would acquiesce if it chose to become an ally of Moscow instead.

“Then I’m sure the Western countries would immediately get together to discuss how they should proceed,” he said.

He did sketch out a possible compromise: a status in NATO for Germany akin to France’s. France is a member of the alliance’s political organizations despite Gen. Charles de Gaulle’s decision to pull the French armed forces out of its unified command. But Gorbachev seemed to insist that even that halfway status be coupled with Warsaw Pact membership.

“I asked (Mitterrand) the question: Why can’t a united Germany be in a situation like France, which is a member of the NATO political organization but not of its military organization?” Gorbachev said. “And with a united Germany connected with the two military blocs, it could somehow make a link between them. Maybe we could use this possibility to demilitarize these blocs, to strengthen their political aspects and downgrade their military aspects.”

But Mitterrand said there could be no such thing as “semi-sovereignty” for Germany. He said the new state should have to give security guarantees to reassure other nations, including the Soviet Union, which by official count lost 27 million people in its four-year struggle against the Nazis in World War II.

Gorbachev stressed that the Soviet Union’s status as one of the victorious World War II Allies--with France, Britain and the United States--empowers it to “complete the process of postwar settlement,” and that until a solution is found to Moscow’s liking, Soviet troops, more than 340,000 of them, will remain in their garrisons in East Germany.

“On the basis of those international legal acts, the Soviet Union will remain where it is now, with its Group of Forces (in Germany),” Gorbachev said. “Is this natural? It is natural.”

The reassessment of foreign policy evoked by Gorbachev could have tremendous implications for East-West relations and what in popular terms is known as “the end of the Cold War.” His statement meant the Soviets could shift their stance in:

The arms negotiations in Vienna embracing 23 countries that are now striving for a landmark treaty mandating reductions in five major categories of weapons, which would be a large step toward ending the postwar military stand-off on the continent.

The CSCE that has defused tensions though military inspections and other means, and that is searching for further agreements in the fields of human rights, economic cooperation and defense and security issues.

Gorbachev, who noted that the future of Germany took up as much as 70% of his three hours of talks with Mitterrand, said a Germany belonging to only one military bloc would impermissibly tilt the balance of forces and endanger the construction of what he calls “a common European home.”

Showing his sensitivity to those concerns, Mitterrand said that “nothing must be done to isolate the Soviet Union or to yield to that old reflex dating back to 1917, to encircle it,” referring to the abortive bid by Western powers to crush the young Bolshevik state.

Nevertheless, France, along with Britain, sides with the United States in calling for NATO membership for Germany. The Soviet Union, contemplating the possible loss of its most valuable Warsaw Pact ally, has offered a succession of proposals, suggesting at different times that the new Germany be neutral, nonaligned or a member of both blocs.

In recent days, U.S. officials have asserted that the Kremlin has imposed a virtual freeze on the Vienna conventional forces in Europe talks, or CFE, apparently because of an ongoing reassessment of its strategic position in a changing Europe.

However, Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze sought to dispel growing Western agreement that Moscow had slowed the pace of CFE, saying Wednesday in Geneva that negotiating a treaty is a Soviet “first priority.”

Some Western officials say the slowdown appears to stem in part from a new, more assertive mood among the Soviet top brass as it takes in the security implications of the collapse of Communist regimes in East Europe and the possible defection of East Germany to the West.

With the seven-nation Warsaw Pact alliance crumbling, member-nations Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Hungary are pushing to get the Soviet troops out, with or without a treaty on Europe-wide reductions of conventional forces.

Asked by a reporter Friday night if he felt threatened by a Soviet army on the ascendant, Gorbachev brushed off the question, saying that in his country the armed forces “more or less have the same influence that they do in the U.S.A.”

But top military officials and civilian conservatives such as Politburo member Yegor K. Ligachev have not concealed their worry at the breakup of what was once known as the “socialist camp.” Gorbachev showed understanding for their point of view Friday and may also have been courting their support as his domestic reform program draws fire from both left and right.

In a related development, a Soviet official in East Berlin confirmed reports Friday that his country had stopped withdrawing troops from East Germany, and said it was because not enough housing could be found back home for returning officers.

At the United Nations in December, 1988, Gorbachev unveiled a unilateral disarmament initiative to cut 500,000 troops from the Soviet armed forces. Four divisions and some smaller-scale units are to be withdrawn from East Germany, for a total of about 36,000 men, or about 10% of the overall contingent.

“Two divisions have left East Germany; that is about half the promised number,” Mikhail Logonov, a Soviet Embassy spokesman in East Berlin, told a news conference. “The unilateral withdrawal has been stopped.”

West German authorities say the Soviets had pulled out a little more than 10,000 military personnel before the suspension, although Soviet authorities say the number is higher.

TOUGHEST ISSUE--German unity may be the thorniest summit topic. A14