Paris and Bonn Move to Create European Army

France and Germany took an important step toward the creation of a Western European army Friday, announcing the establishment of a headquarters in Strasbourg, France, by July and calling on other European countries to enlist their forces.

Meeting in the western French port city of La Rochelle to iron out details of the proposed 35,000-man “Euro-Corps” military force--designed to serve eventually as the military component of the European Community--French President Francois Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl went out of their way to reassure American critics that the new army will not compete with the 43-year-old North Atlantic Treaty Organization as the main guarantor of European security.

“Nobody needs to be afraid,” Kohl said. “This is something to be celebrated, in Washington too.” At German insistence, a paragraph was added to the joint communique stating that “the Euro-Corps will contribute to the reinforcement of the Atlantic Alliance.”

Technically, the European army will fall under the aegis of the eight-member Western European Union, a European security alliance that was dormant for most of the Cold War but was revived after the collapse of the Soviet Union eliminated the main threat to Europe.

The responsibilities for the army, which is scheduled to become operational by 1995, were outlined as common defense, peacekeeping duties and humanitarian missions. Its promoters point to the fragmentation and turmoil of Yugoslavia, which the 12-nation EC has been helpless to prevent, as an example of the kind of mission the new European army might someday undertake.

However, the participation of Germany in these functions would require a change in the country’s constitution, which limits the deployment of German forces to NATO countries.

Few other details about the Euro-Corps were revealed at the conclusion of the two-day Franco-German summit here. Major questions remain about command and staff procedures, the composition and nature of the forces and the locales where they will be based. “What has been said so far is largely symbolic,” said a U.S. official who has followed the debate. “We really don’t know much about how it would actually function.”

A smaller, 3-year-old experiment in Franco-German military cooperation, the 4,200-strong Franco-German brigade based in Boeblingen near Stuttgart, has had mixed results. Former French Defense Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement dismissed the brigade as a glorified “language lab.” The leading French newspaper Le Monde ridiculed the brigade as the “gimmick unit.”

Nevertheless, Mitterrand said Friday that four other European countries--Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain and Italy--have expressed interest in signing up for the Euro-Corps. But their entry would create an additional set of questions about command. It is unlikely, for example, that France or Germany would commit troops to Spanish or Luxembourgeois generals. In the NATO structure, the United States has final command authority.

Bush Administration officials had been skeptical of the Euro-Corps proposal when it was first broached by Mitterrand and Kohl a year ago because they feared it would prompt Congress to accelerate American troop pullouts from European bases.

There are currently about 240,000 American troops in Europe, down from a total of 326,000 at the height of the Cold War. Military commanders want to gradually reduce the number to 150,000 by 1995.

Earlier this week in Washington, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney called the Franco-German corps “a basically sound proposal.” But he cautioned that such a unit must not divert German military forces from the U.S.-led NATO military structure. “Our only concern has been that . . . there’s not a net subtraction from NATO here,” Cheney told the National Press Club.

France is a member of NATO’s political structure but has kept its troops out of the alliance’s military structure since 1966. French officials have said their government envisions the Franco-German corps as the basis for a European military structure that would exclude the United States.

Cheney’s comments also reflected growing American concern that a European security arrangement would increase pressure from many European political forces for U.S. troops to leave Europe. “I think there’s a continuing requirement for the U.S. to stay there,” said Cheney, adding that many East and West European governments agree.

Cheney is to travel to Brussels early next week for a regular meeting of NATO defense ministers to plan the future of European security in the wake of the Cold War. Although France will not attend the meetings, the Franco-German corps is certain to loom large in those discussions, which will focus on plans to reorganize the national units that have long made up NATO’s military into multinational units.

Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee who has been a leading proponent of military burden-sharing by America’s allies, plans to sponsor an amendment to the Defense Department appropriations bill that would limit U.S. troop levels to 100,000 by 1995, the same year that the Euro-Corps army is to become operational.

Interviewed by telephone after the Mitterrand-Kohl announcement Friday, Schroeder said the Euro-Corps would help support her push for further troop cuts.

“We are past the days of measuring our international commitment by body count,” Schroeder said. “It is time for some of our allies who are economically doing very well to take over some of their immediate defense needs.”

Kohl took a similar line at a Friday press conference following the two-day Franco-German summit. By taking some of the responsibility for European defense off America’s shoulders, the German leader said, “We are only doing what many Americans have been asking us to do for years.”

The Euro-Corps announcement came after a Pentagon statement detailing a new round of military cutbacks in Germany, Britain, Greece, Turkey, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and South Korea. The cuts include withdrawal of more than 6,000 American troops and layoffs of 800 U.S. civilians and 2,500 foreigners.

The U.S. military withdrawal from Europe has caused economic hardship in some of the cities where troops and other military personnel were based.

In an interview Wednesday with the Paris-based newspaper Figaro, Kohl spoke of a change in European public attitudes about the troops now that they are leaving. “My term of office began with the deployment of Pershing 2 missiles in 1983. The streets were full of demonstrators,” Kohl recalled. “Now they are demonstrating because the allied troops are leaving. The mayors in the towns who in those days called for the withdrawal of the Americans come to me today and say, ‘This is not good what you are doing to us. The Americans need to stay. If not, it will be a severe blow to our economy.’ ”

The embryonic European army has huge symbolic value for the Continent as it enters the final stages of economic and political unification. Placing the headquarters in Strasbourg means that for the first time since World War II, uniformed German soldiers will be deployed on French soil.

Adding to the drama Friday, the French and German leaders also announced plans to link high-speed rail networks, cutting travel time between Paris and the German cities of Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich by more than 40%.

Times staff writer Melissa Healy in Washington contributed to this story.