EUROPE : Germany’s Clout Kept in Check by Long Memories : Bonn finds itself under fire for backing independence for Slovenia and Croatia.

Once again, an international crisis is proving that history still weighs heavily on a reunited, democratic Germany, reducing its political influence despite its position as Western Europe’s largest, richest nation.

Accused of timidity and cowardice for not taking a faster, more forceful stance against Iraq early in the Gulf War, the Germans now find themselves under attack for acting too boldly in the Yugoslav crisis.

The reaction to German attempts to play a prominent role in containing the fast-unraveling crisis in the Balkans has only underscored how narrow the tightrope is that Bonn foreign policy-makers must walk.

It also raises questions about German diplomatic effectiveness in a region where the country’s leaders have repeatedly said they want to concentrate their international role.

Germany broke from the European pack earlier this month by shifting the accent of its Yugoslav policy to stress the right to self-determination among Slovenians and Croatians at a time when its European partners, the United States and the Soviet Union focused on the need to maintain some form of Yugoslav national unity.

If the two Yugoslav republics were attacked, the European Community should be prepared to extend recognition to Slovenia and Croatia, Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher argued at a July 10 meeting of the community’s 12 foreign ministers in The Hague. The idea--also signaled in comments by Chancellor Helmut Kohl--was quickly rejected and sharply criticized by important European allies, including France, Italy and Spain--all of whom struggle to contain independence movements within their own countries.

It also raised hackles in Moscow and drew blunt insults from leaders of Yugoslavia’s large Serbian population, who accused Germany of expansionism and trying to use the turmoil in the Balkans to establish a Fourth Reich.

“The reaction was vitriolic and ridiculous,” commented a veteran senior diplomat in the EC’s capital, Brussels. “It shows how hard it is for the Germans to take the leadership role in any crisis because their European partners just won’t accept it. History bugs them at every turn.”

Kohl and Genscher quickly retreated to the mainstream EC position, and, although Kohl drew more frowns late last week by becoming the first Western European leader to receive Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, there was no hint in the final communique of the diplomatic recognition Tudjman sought.

Instead, it stressed Germany’s commitment to the community’s plan of promoting a negotiated settlement of the crisis between the Yugoslav federal authorities and the country’s six constituent republics.

The reaction to Germany’s moves in the Yugoslav crisis shows how fresh memories of two world wars remain, despite the passage of nearly half a century since the end of World War II.

After an informal meeting earlier this week in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps, French President Francois Mitterrand worked to dissuade Kohl from the idea of recognizing Croatia and Slovenia, then made his differences with Kohl on Yugoslavia clear, not so much on a point of substance, but by an oblique reference to Germany’s past. “The era of grand empires in the Balkans is over,” he reportedly said.

As a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, both Slovenia and Croatia fought against the Allies (and Serbia) in World War I, while a Nazi puppet state established in Croatia during World War II committed horrific atrocities against Serbs. It is an experience that still stokes suspicion in the minds of Serbian leaders and members of the Communist, Serb-dominated, Yugoslav army officer corps, prompting comments that Germany’s interest in the crisis is to launch a Fourth Reich.

Few outside Yugoslavia take such comments seriously, although Bonn’s persistence has unsettled its allies.

Rather than any desire to establish new client states, Bonn’s initial shift away from the EC plan was motivated mainly by internal domestic pressure, especially from within Kohl’s Christian Democrats, political analysts who have monitored the crisis believe. They argued that, if self-determination served as the focal point of German unity (East Germany’s first free national election in March of last year was seen as a clear mandate to unify), it could not be denied other Europeans.