Germany Mulls Role in Global Peacekeeping : Parliamentary debate due Jan. 14 may lead to a policy shift on use of forces.

In the face of legal, moral and political resistance, Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s government is inching toward a decision that would permit German military forces to take part in international peacekeeping activities.

An important policy shift in this direction could come out of a parliamentary debate scheduled for Jan. 14. That debate is expected to center on a possible role for German forces in assisting the U.N.-sponsored relief operations in Somalia, although the use of Luftwaffe personnel in enforcing a much-discussed “no-fly zone” for Serbian aircraft over Bosnia is also likely to be weighed.

Any agreement about the deployment of German soldiers in these areas would almost certainly be a precedent that would effectively end restrictions on the role of Germany’s military since the end of World War II.

Ambiguous wording in Germany’s constitution has for years been interpreted as forbidding the deployment of its forces anywhere outside the 16-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization region or for any purpose other than the defense of German territory.

Germany’s Western allies, many of them victims of previous German military adventurism, were content with this stance throughout the Cold War. But with the collapse of communism, German unification and new security demands, they have pressured Bonn to share more equally in the risks of peacekeeping outside Europe.

There was little understanding--and considerable resentment--about the absence of German forces on the allied side of the Gulf War, even though the Kohl government tried to compensate by providing $12 billion to help finance the operation and dispatching 18 fighter jets to Turkey, on Iraq’s northern border.

“More (money) will never be enough,” a former senior U.S. State Department official warned a group of German policy-makers after that war.

The Jan. 14 debate was sparked last month by a clearly impatient Kohl. Worried that Germany would once again be left out of military operations undertaken by its closest NATO allies, he broke with tradition and the longstanding interpretation of the constitution, offering the United Nations up to 1,500 armed German troops to help distribute aid in Somalia. The country’s international reputation was at stake, he said.

At a news conference, Kohl said he will personally preside over the effort to steer the initiative through the parliamentary warren of legal and political obstacles.

As expected, he quickly won the backing of his own Christian Democrats, whose general secretary, Peter Hintze, declared that it was “barely tolerable and hardly responsible if Germany would still not be in a position to participate completely in (a Somalia-like) operation.”

The main opposition Social Democrats, however, quickly opposed Kohl’s plan, threatening to challenge the move in the Federal Constitutional Court. They demanded an emergency meeting of the Bundestag’s defense committee, which set the Jan. 14 debate date.

The Social Democrats have already filed suit challenging the government’s decision to send a German frigate to join the monitoring of the U.N.-ordered embargo of Serbian-controlled sections of the Adriatic coast.

Party Chairman Bjoern Engholm, meanwhile, lamented what he termed “an intolerable burden on families of the young soldiers” who might be deployed to Somalia.

But Kohl’s problems are not just with the opposition. Members of his junior coalition partner, the small Free Democratic Party, which voiced tentative support for the Somalia action, have demanded a clarification of the proposed constitutional wording that would limit the future deployment of German forces to actions sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council.

That language is more restrictive than Kohl’s desire for wording that would permit deploying German troops “in accordance with the U.N. Charter.”

The Social Democrats want to limit German participation to “blue helmet” peacekeeping operations, and strenuously oppose any so-called out-of-area deployment of German troops until the constitution is amended.

While the debate’s outcome is likely to have an impact on the Somalia relief activities, its influence on the future of a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Bosnia will be far greater.

Germans make up roughly 30% of the international NATO flight crews that operate the alliance’s all-important electronics guidance aircraft, known as AWACS. German refusal to participate in such an operation would leave gaping holes in the AWACS crews, a development that would seriously limit NATO’s ability to enforce a no-fly ban.