Germany Will Join Airdrops to Bosnia, Help Patrol Danube

Faced with a constitutional crisis that could handicap NATO, Germany moved Wednesday to step up its Balkan involvement by joining the United States in making relief airdrops over Bosnia and sending boats to patrol the Danube River for violators of the U.N. embargo against Serbia.

The decision by Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his Cabinet to allow German planes to drop food and medicine over eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina came as Bonn’s coalition partners remained gridlocked over Germany’s military role within the alliance.

At issue is whether German air crews are prohibited by the constitution from flying in North Atlantic Treaty Organization surveillance planes if the United Nations votes to enforce a “no-fly zone” over Bosnia. On Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council in New York postponed a vote on enforcement of such a zone for the third straight day.

In Washington, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev said they have agreed to delay the vote for seven days to give U.N. mediators Cyrus R. Vance and Lord Owen more time to seek a compromise for peace in Bosnia. Asked why another week would work when months of negotiations have failed, Kozyrev replied: “I can’t give you any guarantee that this time we will be more successful than before, but we must try.”

The German government’s spokesman, Dieter Vogel, said three Transall C-160 military cargo planes are ready to start aid flights at any time, but he declined for security reasons to say when the first planes would take off.

Kohl’s center-right coalition also decided to send border guard boats to Romania and Bulgaria to patrol the Danube for embargo-breakers as part of a small flotilla planned by the Western European Union. The nine-nation union, a Western European defense grouping, is expected to iron out details of that mission April 5. Vogel said no decision has been made on whether the German boats will be armed.

Germany’s constitution contains a clause generally interpreted as a ban on German military actions other than those needed to defend territory within NATO’s theater.

Kohl and his defense minister, both Christian Democrats, support changing the constitution to permit military participation in crises such as the Persian Gulf War. But the government’s junior coalition partner, the Free Democrats, are balking, as are the opposition Social Democrats.

Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, a Free Democrat, has said he is against German participation in any surveillance mission over the former Yugoslav federation. Specially equipped airborne warning and control system (AWACS) planes would be used for such a task, and within NATO, Germans account for 30% of the crews.