NATO Uneasy Over Danish Bid to Bolster Ban on Visiting A-Armed Ships

Denmark’s move to bolster its ban on visiting nuclear-armed warships has focused attention on a NATO ally that already suffers from a reputation as an unreliable comrade-in-arms.

NATO long has complained that Denmark does not pull its weight in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Its annual defense spending --2.2% of its gross national product in 1987--is the lowest of NATO’s European members except for Greece and Italy.

For 31 years, Denmark has had a general policy banning nuclear arms from its soil in peacetime. Until now, Danish officials took the position of assuming that visiting warships would obey.

Last month, Parliament voted to demand that warships be told they cannot carry nuclear arms into Danish ports.

At NATO headquarters here, officials say the measure, if implemented, would render NATO’s reinforcement strategy for Denmark useless.

The measure led Danish Prime Minister Poul Schlueter’s minority government to call for early elections May 10.

The center-right government opposes the nuclear-armed warship measure and maintains that Danes remain loyal to NATO.

One Danish NATO official said that in a marriage, “it behooves either partner not to be confrontational.”

“We should not exaggerate the situation but accept there are differences of opinion within NATO,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Such comments do little to calm the nerves of NATO officials whose primary concern is to maintain an ironclad consensus about defense, notably nuclear arms.

NATO members Norway and Spain both prohibit the stationing of nuclear arms on their soil during peacetime. But neither requires visiting NATO warships to declare whether they are carrying such arms.

In 1984, the United States and Britain broke off military cooperation with New Zealand after that country began insisting that warships say whether or not they carry nuclear weapons.

“We know that in some cases allied warships carried nuclear arms into our ports,” the Danish official said. “This, of course, was not allowed but we closed one eye.”

To tell visiting warships they cannot carry nuclear arms into Danish ports would, said NATO Secretary General Lord Carrington, “run counter to the basis of NATO strategy and the principles of shared burdens and benefits” of alliance membership.

The United States and Britain, which would rush to Denmark’s aid in times of crisis with troops and materiel, have a policy of never saying whether their warships have nuclear arms.

A U.S. NATO official said that the stricter anti-nuclear stand, if taken to its logical conclusion, would mean that NATO allies cannot reinforce Denmark during a crisis before the outbreak of war.

Failure to reinforce NATO’s chokepoint on the Soviet Union’s Baltic fleet would affect not just Denmark but also neighboring West Germany.

“It’s clear this is not a Danish-American or Danish-British problem, but a matter for all of the alliance,” said a senior West German NATO source.

In 1985, Michael Hesseltine, then-British defense secretary, warned Danes not to expect British soldiers to come to their aid if they don’t do more for their own defense.

Last March, Danish Lt. Gen. Poul Thorsen, NATO’s top commander for the Baltic Approaches, resigned and said he could no longer “represent Denmark in a reasonable manner.” He said Danish defense was being “maltreated” through gross underfinancing.