Kohl Vows Crackdown on German Extremists : Europe: Chancellor also warns foreign residents against violence. He promises to reform citizenship law.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl announced dramatic steps Wednesday to fight a deadly surge of racist violence sweeping Germany and promised “fast” reforms of an 80-year-old citizenship law that could offer foreigners equal rights for the first time ever.

In his first address before the Bundestag, or lower house of Parliament, since the worst incident of xenophobic violence to date claimed the lives of five Turks last month, Kohl was at times conciliatory and at times defensive as he discussed the nation’s most pressing problem in the run-up to federal elections next year.

Vowing to crack down against the young skinheads and neo-Nazis who are responsible for the right-wing attacks on foreigners, Kohl called for tougher sentences, more police power and better nationwide tracking of militant right-wingers.

But at the same time, the conservative chancellor reiterated his government’s threat to deport any foreigners who fight violence with violence, and he sharply condemned “the small groups of Turkish fanatics”’ who rioted in the streets of Solingen, where two Turkish women and three children were killed in a neo-Nazi arson attack on May 29.

Kohl has been under mounting pressure to take decisive action against racism since Solingen, when he was sharply criticized even from within his own party for refusing to attend memorial services for the Turkish victims. Critics have accused him of distancing himself from the debate over right-wing violence in order to curry favor with right-leaning voters as he prepares to stand for reelection in the fall of 1994.

The radical right is widely expected to win at least 5% of the vote, the minimum for election to the Bundestag next year, by using the country’s sagging economy to lure protest votes from mainstream parties with slogans such as “Germany for Germans.”

In a clearly conciliatory gesture Wednesday, Kohl also backed government compensation for the victims of racist assaults, a social benefit afforded until now only to German crime victims.

“We need friends more than others,” Kohl declared, saying that “decency and dignity” should be in the foreground of relations with foreigners.

“I know friendliness cannot be mandated,” he added, noting with regret that “decency and dignity . . . have become alien words to some.”

Kohl repeated his own opposition to dual citizenship for foreign nationals in Germany but said that “in the current situation, I think it’s sensible” to review citizenship laws, which now exclude virtually anyone who cannot prove German ancestry.

The exclusion particularly affects Germany’s estimated 1.8 million Turks, many of whom came here at the government’s invitation about 30 years ago as guest workers and stayed on to raise families here. Although born, raised and educated in Germany, their offspring do not qualify for citizenship under current law.

The new citizenship law outlined by Kohl would target longtime residents and their children but would not open the door for immigration and naturalization.

About 6.5 million foreigners live in Germany, which has a population of around 80 million. But unlike foreigners in neighboring Holland, for example, foreigners in Germany are virtually invisible in the civil service, politics and many white-collar jobs.

The prospect of German citizenship for foreigners comes on the heels of a controversial government move to close the country’s doors against the hundreds of thousands of economic asylum-seekers who flood across the border each year. Germany’s laws of asylum have been among the most liberal in Europe.

But most of the Turks in Germany are not newcomers. According to Kohl, “nearly 70% have already lived in Germany longer than 10 years, almost 20% longer than 20 years.”

Kohl pointed out that about 30,000 Turks living in Germany “have organized into extremist organizations.” He described them as revolutionary Marxists, fundamentalists and Turkish and Kurdish nationalists.

“We expect every foreigner to play by the democratic rules of peaceful human coexistence,” Kohl declared.

The chancellor’s tone became defensive when he discussed Germany’s track record with regard to foreigners. He pointed to the massive influx of refugees and the shelter they receive before most of them are ultimately deported, and to German aid for Somalia and the former republics of Yugoslavia, as proof of the country’s humanitarianism.

In a swipe at press critics, Kohl deviated from his prepared text and said, “Whoever writes tauntingly about hostility toward foreigners should first compare it with what is really achieved here.”

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the domestic intelligence agency that monitors extremism, has counted more than 42,000 German right-wing extremists, including 6,400 whom it considers dangerous.

More than 70% of those arrested for racist violence are under 20; up to age 18, even those who commit murder can be sentenced to no more than 10 years in custody.

According to Kohl, authorities investigated more than 12,000 reports of right-wing or racist crimes last year. About 60% of those were considered “propaganda crimes”--violations of a law that bars the display of Nazi symbols or distribution of nationalistic literature. Many neo-Nazis evade the law by slightly altering the Hitler salute or reversing a hook on a swastika tattoo. Among the tougher laws Kohl advocated Wednesday was a ban on neo-Nazi symbols and paraphernalia as well as on Third Reich emblems.

He also urged:

* Broader powers for the federal prosecutor.

* Changes in the privacy laws that hinder investigators seeking information about suspected criminals.

* Preventive detention of suspected radicals considered a threat to the community.

Opinion polls regularly show that most Germans clearly oppose racism and right-wing violence. But with Germany in the grip of a recession, worries are common about the cost of sheltering economic refugees while their cases for staying are examined.