Germany Leads Push to Boost Help for Soviets : Aid: The United States and Japan are likely targets for an intense lobbying effort from Bonn.

As momentum builds in the West to review aid commitments to Moscow in the wake of this week’s failed putsch against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, no country will be pushing its allies harder to do more than will Germany.

Including funds for financing the withdrawal of Soviet forces from eastern Germany, the German government has pledged, paid or underwritten economic assistance to the Soviet Union worth more than $30 billion since early 1989--a figure that, according to the country’s leading economic daily newspaper Handlesblatt, amounts to 40% of all aid mounted by leading Western countries during the same period.

Comments from across the German political spectrum indicate that efforts will now be mounted to get other nations to contribute more.

“The aid from the West must be as massive as the aid from Germany so far,” Economics Minister Juergen Moellemann said Friday in a radio interview. “The West must proceed with greater solidarity in its economic cooperation.”

Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s chief spokesman Dieter Vogel echoed Moellemann’s comments at a news conference in Bonn later in the day, stating that the chancellor would work in the coming days for an “agreed, common policy among the industrial countries.”

German Finance Minister Theo Waigel is scheduled to visit Moscow within the next three weeks to discuss further economic assistance, the German government also announced Friday.

With an emergency meeting of senior officials from the seven leading industrialized democracies, known as the Group of Seven, expected to convene next week in London to review aid to the Soviets, and with pressure growing in Europe for a summit meeting of the 12 European Community nations to discuss the same subject, the Germans are likely to have ample chances to exert this pressure.

According to government and diplomatic sources here, the United States and Japan are likely to be targeted for especially intense lobbying from Bonn.

“There is a direct appeal to Japan and the United States, “ said German Foreign Ministry spokesman Klaus Peter Brandes. “It’s a question of capacity (to give), not of geographical distance.”

Added Karl Lamers, a member of the Bundestag for Kohl’s Christian Democrats and his party’s parliamentary spokesman on foreign affairs: “This is a moment in history, and we have to use it. It is a chance, no more, no less. We Germans must give more in the future, but not as much as previously and not alone.”

Lamers believes, as do many other German political leaders, that with the conservative forces now on the retreat in the Soviet Union, aid would have a better chance of making a dent in the country’s massive problems.

He also advocated working more directly with the individual Soviet republics, where aid and technical assistance could be more easily targeted and controlled than in dealing with the immensity of the Soviet national bureaucracy.

Germany, together with France and Italy, was at the forefront of those who urged that Gorbachev be invited as an observer to last month’s Group of Seven summit in London. The Soviet leader won little more there than encouragement for economic reforms and voices of concern about the deteriorating economic conditions.

The United States and Japan were especially reluctant.

Washington has called on Moscow to end its aid to Cuba before it considers any large-scale economic assistance, while Japan wants the Soviets to give back four islands they hold well north of the Japanese mainland before it weighs in with sizable financial backing. Soviet forces seized the islands during the final days of World War II.

There are several reasons why Germany is pressing harder than its allies for greater financial help for Moscow.

Kohl, who just over a year ago won Gorbachev’s blessing for German unity during a personal meeting at Gorbachev’s private home, feels a deep personal commitment to assist the Soviet leader in his present difficulties.

But there is more than friendship at stake.

Indeed, the prospect of a Soviet Union slipping into chaos, with millions of refugees fleeing westward across Europe, has become an acute fear to many Germans.

The Kohl government is also counting heavily on orders from Soviet industry to help revive the depressed eastern German economy, which during the Communist era had nearly half a million jobs linked directly to trade with Moscow.

During a trip to Moscow earlier this year, Moellemann won orders worth $5 billion from the Soviets for east German industry, along with a pledge to conclude an additional $1.7 billion. A failure of this business would have a direct impact on German government coffers.