Baker, Genscher Confer on Missiles : ‘Good’ Meeting Held on Bonn Proposal to Delay New Weapon

Secretary of State James A. Baker III, seeking to defuse an issue that could disrupt NATO military strategy, met with West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher on Sunday to discuss a Bonn proposal to delay building a new short-range nuclear missile.

“What we need to do is find out exactly what the position is--what the German government position is going to be,” Baker told reporters shortly before landing here on the fourth stop of a weeklong, 15-country tour of North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies.

But after a two-hour dinner meeting with Genscher, a senior U.S. official traveling with Baker said only that the two “had a good discussion” of the issue. The official refused to elaborate, suggesting that the question remained unsettled.

But the official called the dinner meeting “extremely warm and cordial.”

Baker and other U.S. officials were taken by surprise last week when West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, under political pressure at home, announced that he wants to delay an expected NATO decision on modernizing short-range nuclear missiles.

Agreement Sought This Year

U.S. officials hoped that the alliance would agree some time this year to develop a new version of the current battlefield missile, the Lance.

NATO has deployed an estimated 88 Lance missile launchers with an estimated 700 nuclear warheads in Western Europe, most of them in West Germany. The battlefield missiles, with a range of 70 miles, are intended to deter an attack on the West by Soviet tank forces.

But the presence of the missiles has become an increasingly sensitive issue in West Germany, which is where they are most likely to be used if a general war breaks out.

Genscher, who leads the small Free Democratic Party in a governing coalition with Kohl’s Christian Democrats, has long favored negotiations to reduce or ban the short-range missiles.

Kohl, who had previously supported the NATO plan to decide on a modernization plan this year, said in a British newspaper interview last week that there was no need to settle the question until 1991 or 1992--after West Germany’s next election at the end of 1990.

U.S. ‘Needs a Decision’

But Baker told British officials in London earlier Sunday that he “needs a decision” on the issue to win funding from Congress for the development of a modernized missile, according to a British aide.

On Saturday, Wolfgang Schaeuble, a Kohl aide who visited Washington last week, told an interviewer that U.S. officials agreed with Bonn that NATO could put off a decision on modernization until 1991, but a senior British official called Schaeuble’s comment “an overstatement.”

Reflecting the U.S. view that short-range missiles--those with a range of up to 300 miles-- are a necessary part of NATO strategy, Baker said the Bush Administration opposes negotiating a ban on the weapons like that concluded on intermediate-range missiles in 1987. A U.S.-Soviet agreement banned all ground-launched missiles with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles.

“We have not changed our view with respect to the inadvisability of negotiating” an agreement on short-range missiles, he told reporters.

Baker also said he is pleased with West Germany’s recent actions to crack down on West German firms that have been selling equipment for making chemical weapons to Third World nations.

The Kohl government’s plans to crack down on such exports are “quite promising, in our view,” Baker said.

Lunch With Thatcher

Baker flew to Bonn after spending 17 hours in Britain, including a working lunch with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at Chequers, her official country residence, 40 miles from London.

Baker said that he and Thatcher agreed “on a broad range of issues ranging from broad East-West themes to regional issues.”

“We and the British remain very, very close together on all these issues,” he said.

Baker noted, however, that he did discuss one point of disagreement with British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe: Britain’s plea for the United States to agree to relax a joint Western ban on high-technology exports to the Soviet Union.

The ban was instituted after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Britain has proposed that the curbs be eased slightly to allow for equipment with no clear military use to be sold to Moscow. But Baker has said he would like to maintain the ban for the time being.

“They would prefer to see the ‘no exceptions’ rule lifted,” Baker said.

An Open Mind

A British official quoted Baker as saying the Administration “has an open mind on the question but wants to study it further.”

The British official said Baker also assured Howe that the Administration has decided to continue its dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization, despite demands from Israel and U.S. Jewish groups that the talks stop.

Howe urged the secretary of state to continue the contacts to “encourage the Palestinians to sustain their present moderate course,” the British official said.

Howe, speaking to reporters on the sidewalk outside his London residence, echoed Baker’s explanation for the visit, his first overseas trip as secretary of state.

“This is not an occasion for decision-taking,” Howe said. “It is an occasion for reviewing the agenda.”

Baker was staying overnight at Schloss Gymnich, a government-owned castle in the countryside south of Bonn.

On Monday, he was scheduled to fly on to Denmark and Norway, then to return to Bonn for dinner with Kohl and Genscher.

The inaugural diplomatic blitz will continue through the week with stops in Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and France.