DEFENSE : U.S. Leadership Called Crucial to Global Peace : NATO chief wants American public to understand nation’s importance in alliance.

NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner is heading for speaking engagements in California next week with an urgent message: The United States must retain its leadership in world affairs to ensure global stability.

“California often looks toward the Pacific Rim,” said the political leader of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in his spacious office here. “But without American leadership in Europe, the world would be more and more unstable.”

As NATO forces prepare to enforce the “no-fly” zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina, Woerner is concerned that the American public may not realize how important the Atlantic Alliance remains--even after the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Besides shifting its focus from the former Soviet Union as the leading threat, Woerner said, NATO has broadened its scope to include out-of-area operations such as Bosnia, where NATO may play a leading role in peacekeeping.

“Currently,” Woerner said, “we are enforcing the United Nations embargo order, monitoring Bosnian airspace and have supplied a headquarters for the U.N. humanitarian protection force. Eight NATO member nations now have a total of more than 10,000 troops in the area.

“We are prepared to do more in addition to enforcing the no-fly zone--to control heavy weapons and to provide troops for implementing the possible peace plan in Bosnia,” added Woerner, a former German defense minister.

NATO has developed plans for providing 50,000 to 75,000 soldiers to serve in monitoring a Balkan peace accord, if it is worked out at the United Nations. The force could include up to 20,000 U.S. service personnel.

Like other NATO officials, Woerner realizes the risks involved, particularly if NATO would enter the fray and somehow watch the effort fail.

But Woerner, whose term as secretary general has been extended to 1996, says that recent events show there are only two alternatives for conducting allied military operations in “a hostile environment.” One is the United States, acting as it did in the Persian Gulf War, leading an improvised coalition of allied forces. The other, he said, is NATO.

“These will remain the options for a long time to come,” and that includes any attempt at solving the tough Bosnian problem, he said.

Woerner likes to draw attention to the new role of NATO in its developing relationship with the countries of Eastern Europe: the 16 NATO nations are linked to 22 former Soviet Bloc countries in the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. This grouping has seen former Communist foes become allied with NATO and seek full-fledged alliance membership; Woerner cautions that such inclusion would be premature throughout most of the coming decade.

“I think it a measure of the importance of NATO that our former enemies wish to join the alliance,” Woerner said. “Why? Because once you’re in, you feel safe. If you’re out, you feel less safe. So it proves the value of NATO as the key factor of stability in an unstable environment.”

He said NATO has “found two new missions that no other organization can fulfill: providing forces for peacekeeping efforts and projecting our blanket of stability for those nations of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.”

Woerner is well aware of U.S. defense budget cutbacks affecting NATO and the need for more European burden-sharing as America reduces its forces in Europe from 187,000 now to 100,000 in 1996. And he sympathizes with them.

Still, as he sees it, the United States remains the world’s only superpower and, as such, cannot because of budget problems afford to allow regional conflicts to spread and become much more costly, long-term problems.

On his California trip, Woerner said, he will point out that NATO recognizes that U.S. priorities in the Clinton Administration will be largely focused on domestic issues. But the bottom line is that “the United States can’t take a holiday from history.”

NATO’s Mission

Founded in 1949 as an international, collective defense group the North Atlantic Treaty Organization links European nations and the Untied States and Canada. Member countries agree to treat an armed attack on any one them as an attack against all. Formal members: Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the United States. France is an Atlantic Alliance member but withdrew from NATO’s integrated military structure.

ITS LEADER: Secretary General Manfred Woerner

Age: 58

Education: Studied law at universities of Heidelberg, Paris and Munich. Earned doctorate in international law.

Career: Won German Parliament seat in 1965. Became defense spokesman when his party was the opposition. In 19882, served as defense minister under German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. In 1987, appointed to NATO post, the first German to hold the job.