Kohl Heads for U.S. Today in Bid to Repair Relations : Diplomacy: His high-profile trip is designed to downplay belated German support for the Persian Gulf allies.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl travels to Washington today for a three-day visit to revive credibility in Germany as an important U.S. ally and to repair the diplomatic damage his country suffered during the Gulf War.

Germany’s belated, occasionally equivocal support for the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq isolated Bonn from its key allies and raised serious questions about the reliability of the nation that the Bush Administration saw as the future prime political force in Europe.

Kohl’s trip, his first to the United States since the spring of 1990, is purposely high profile. It includes a luncheon speech to the Atlantic Council on Monday and a news conference Tuesday, in addition to meetings with President Bush, Secretary of State James A. Baker III and congressional leaders.

Close aides said Kohl’s central message will be simple: support for U.S. policy in the Middle East, recommitment to the transatlantic relationship and a strong signal that Germany is ready to play a larger international role.

“I will make clear during my visit to Washington that the Federal Republic is ready to accept this responsibility--together with its European partners and together with the United States,” Kohl told a news conference Friday in Bonn.

His trip is partly an escape from a series of domestic troubles linked mainly to the collapse of the eastern German economy in the months since unification. These problems have overwhelmed his government, caused his personal popularity to plummet and literally left egg on his face.

On a visit to the eastern German city of Halle earlier this month, protesters, including some from the opposition Social Democrats, pelted him with eggs as he tried to explain his government’s policy for regional economic revival. The incident marked the low point in Kohl’s dramatic fall from grace since his reelection as chancellor last December.

Through the summer and autumn of 1990, he basked in the glow of international praise and domestic popularity with his handling of German unity and won a landslide election victory for a third four-year term as chancellor.

Kohl’s foreign policy problems stem mainly from the Gulf War--the first real test of responsibility for the recently reunited nation. It was a test many Americans, as well as many Germans, felt Germany failed. “The Bush idea was ‘partners in leadership,’ but the Germans weren’t up to it,” one U.S. official said.

A government paralysis in the early days of the war, coupled with large anti-war, anti-American street protests, distanced Germany from most of its key Western allies involved in the war. While Germans subsequently provided $12.7 billion to help finance the war, and U.S. military bases in Germany were key staging areas between America and the Gulf, mutual unhappiness remains.

The Bush Administration has generally confined its criticism to private rather than public remarks.

But at a recent conference here co-sponsored by Atlantik-Bruecke (Atlantic Bridge, an organization created to foster German-American harmony) and the American Council on Germany, one of Baker’s closest aides, Robert B. Zoellick, State Department counselor, warned the Germans that attempts to escape direct involvement by financing the actions of others could isolate Germany from its key allies and breed resentment.

Many Germans were equally unhappy with their country’s reaction. Noting the amount of money spent and technical support offered, Karl Lamers, parliamentary spokesman on foreign affairs for Kohl’s Christian Democrats, said: “This policy was one of maximum performance but minimal influence. This will never be repeated.

“When Germany acts as if it has no power, it only awakens suspicion among its neighbors,” Lamers added.

For decades after World War II, allies who had suffered from German militarism this century were soothed by successive West German governments’ interpretation of ambiguous wording in the constitution as banning deployment of military forces outside the Western Alliance area. But with unity, those same allies looked at Germany in a new, more mature light and expected German help.

That was a shift for which the Germans were unprepared. “With the restoration of their sovereignty, we expected them to turn the page (in history), but they said they couldn’t,” a U.S. official noted.

After finding his government uncomfortably isolated from important allies, Kohl has gradually begun to move by pushing at the boundaries of German constitutional constraints. As soon as the war ended, he dispatched German minesweepers to the Gulf to assist in clearing Iraqi mines. He skirted the apparent conflict with the constitutional interpretation by labeling the action humanitarian.

Germany has also played a leading role in assisting with Kurdish relief, pledging $235 million in financial aid and dispatching 200 soldiers to the Iranian province of Bakhtaran to set up refugee camps. Germany was reportedly prepared to send 2,000 troops until Tehran objected.

In talks with Bush and other leaders, Kohl is expected to stress German support for a separate European security policy, backed by troops from West European Union countries including Germany.