Alliance A Nasty Spat Among Friends

By David Brand

The day was warm, so the four men sat for a while on the State Department's eighth-floor balcony, overlooking beds of red and yellow tulips. But the meeting was a good deal less pleasant than the surroundings. Across from West Germany's Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Defense Minister Gerhard Stoltenberg sat a grim-faced American duo: Secretary of State James Baker and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. After the four-hour meeting, Baker declared himself "furious" that the Germans had come at all.

The nasty falling-out between normally amicable allies was the result of renewed German demands that the U.S. open talks with the Soviet Union on reducing Europe's short-range nuclear weapons, nearly all of which are deployed on West German soil. At one point, Genscher complained that his country would bear the brunt of a Soviet attack. An exasperated Cheney interrupted Genscher: "Look, if the flag goes up, we're all going to be obliterated, so we don't need to hear any of that."

Nonetheless, Chancellor Helmut Kohl did not back down, and last week formally proposed negotiations with Moscow. In the U.S. view, the German demands threaten the entire NATO strategy of nuclear deterrence. For 40 years NATO has relied on nuclear weapons to offset the Warsaw Pact's overwhelming superiority in conventional arms. The backbone of its land-based tactical nuclear force consists of 88 U.S.-made Lance launchers.

West Germans, who are increasingly opposed to such weapons, have become disillusioned with Kohl, who faces elections next year. To help Kohl with his political problems, the U.S. agreed to delay a decision on deploying an updated, longer-range Lance (up to 280 miles). In return, U.S. officials got the impression that Bonn would not press for missile talks with the Soviets . until there is significant progress on limiting conventional arms.

But the next day, Genscher persuaded Kohl to renege on the agreement, mainly as a desperate ploy to win domestic political points. In London an angry Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared that "anything to undermine NATO will be damaging to the defense of liberty." The West Germans, though, have support from other NATO members, and diplomats suggested the likelihood of a compromise before the alliance's summit meeting in May. But NATO cannot discount the dominating figure of Mikhail Gorbachev. In the minds of many Europeans -- if not in fact -- Gorbachev has removed the Soviet threat with seductive arms initiatives, particularly his promise to make major unilateral cuts in Soviet army forces in Eastern Europe.

That withdrawal began last week, when 31 Soviet tanks were loaded onto flatbed cars in Hungary. Among those watching the pullout was Ilona Staller, a member of the Italian Parliament and a porno-movie star. Staller kept her clothes on when she posed with Soviet officers, and released a white dove of peace. Ominously, perhaps, the bird was crushed in the treads of a Soviet tank.

With reporting by James O. Jackson/Bonn and Christopher Ogden/Washington