Kohl Rejects Speculation He’s Leaning to Neutrality

BONN —  West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl sought Thursday to defuse speculation that his government might move toward neutralism, insisting that such a policy would be ruinous.

Kohl, addressing a foreign policy meeting of his Christian Democratic Union, declared, “Those who dream of a go-it-alone national solution of the German question have not learned the lessons of history in this century.

“A special German route, whether backed by a leftist or rightist ideology, would lead us into new and fatal isolation and finally cause disaster,” he said. “A neutral Germany has no future.”

Kohl was trying to refute suggestions, circulated recently in the West European media, that Moscow and Bonn might make a deal: Reunification of Germany on the condition that it take a neutral position independent of the Atlantic Alliance.

Continues to Be a Goal

Kohl acknowledged that a reunified German state continues to be a goal set out in the West German constitution. But he added, “For all those who want a free Germany in a free Europe, policies must be based on solidarity and close ties with the West and a constructive relationship with the East.”

Reunification, he said, can be achieved only after the ideological barriers between East and West are removed.

Another speaker at the meeting, U.S. Ambassador Richard R. Burt, sought to allay German fears that the United States might “decouple” its security forces from those in Europe.

“America is not going to sit on the sidelines in the case of war in Europe,” he said, adding that U.S. troops will be stationed in Europe “as long as Europe wants American troops.”

Congressional Complaints

Burt admitted that some U.S. congressmen have complained that Europeans should take on more of the burden of maintaining defense forces aligned against the Warsaw Pact countries.

But he said that Europeans bear a heavier share of the risk in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, especially West Germany, which is on the East-West frontier. This, he said, sometimes needs to be emphasized to the American public.

Burt said it is true that new directions are needed in arms control in the wake of the recent Soviet-American accord aimed at eliminating ground-launched intermediate-range nuclear missiles, but he added that the alliance has stood up well in the years since World War II. It is his view, he said, that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Burt’s Soviet counterpart, Ambassador Yuli A. Kvitsinsky, also addressed the meeting, saying that the nuclear arms race “is a dead end--it cannot be won.”

Gorbachev Policy Cited

Kvitsinsky denied that Moscow is making an effort to isolate West Germany from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and he said that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s policy of openness and arms reduction is in no sense a “political trick to bring confusion to the West.”

He said the closer West Germany is tied to the Atlantic Alliance, “the more stable are the territorial structures in Europe, and these structures have brought us peace in Europe for 40 years.”

Kvitsinsky recalled Gorbachev’s declaration last year that it will be up to history to decide whether the two Germanys will ever be reunited. The audience groaned, and Kvitsinsky, smiling, asked whether he could add another quotation. To murmurs of “ Nein ,” he continued: “The German question (reunification) remains open but is not on the agenda today.”

There was more grumbling, and Kvitsinsky said, to an apparently surprised audience, “Those were the words of Chancellor Kohl.”