Kohl Dismisses Fears About Germany’s Growing Political Clout

Chancellor Helmut Kohl on Wednesday dismissed concern about Germany’s growing political power, declaring it an inevitable yet positive development for Europe.

“No one really needs to be afraid of the Germans,” Kohl told a group of foreign correspondents at a formal lunch here. “No one is running around with jackboots wanting to mug someone. I believe we’ve learned at least as much as others from history (because) we had more reason to.”

In the course of a two-hour, question-and-answer session, Kohl sketched a set of personal foreign policy goals for himself and his country. They were anchored in the consolidation of German unification and focused mainly on the creation of a larger European unity. He referred often to the vision of West Germany’s first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, declaring at one point, “I want a United States of Europe.”

He also made it clear that the newly free, but economically devastated, nations of Eastern Europe are part of his vision. “I’ve never understood the European Community as anything other than the torso of Europe,” he said.

Attempting to ease the anxieties of Germany’s neighbors and allies in the wake of the country’s controversial shaping--critics would say “hijacking”--of EC policy on Yugoslavia, Kohl declared, “We Germans don’t want to go it alone.”

The wave of criticism that erupted after German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher last month cajoled his EC counterparts, effectively, to take sides in the Yugoslav conflict by recognizing the breakaway republics of Croatia and Slovenia stung the government. It left policy-makers with the knowledge that, despite 40 years of successful democracy, German policy remained, at least partially, a captive of history.

The respected British magazine, The Economist, portrayed Germany as “frog-marching” (strong-arming) the EC to a recognition of the two republics.

“I don’t believe we’ve earned the mistrust,” Kohl said at another point. “No one can wish more than that the Germans agree with the words of Thomas Mann that we are German Europeans and not European Germans.”

Kohl’s comments came less than 24 hours after U.S. Ambassador to Germany Robert M. Kimmitt, in carefully chosen words, said in Bonn that America “welcomed and valued this German assertiveness” but noted that it should be contained within “collective actions designed to achieve common goals and objectives.”

Some State Department officials are known to have been unsettled by recent German political actions, although an American official here said no such concern was conveyed officially to the Bonn government.

Kohl on Wednesday also denied that Germany was pushing for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, suggesting instead that the European Community should be represented by the mid-1990s, if the push toward European political union progresses rapidly.