Keeping the Issues Separate

By Frederick Painton

Europeans say no to the invasion, but still yes to missiles

Sweeping down from low, dark clouds, the giant U.S. Air Force Galaxy transport rumbled to a landing at Greenham Common air-base in Britain. It was bearing a historic and controversial cargo: the first cruise missile launchers (minus as yet their nuclear warheads and missiles) to arrive in Western Europe under NATO'S 1979 "two track" decision. That policy asserted that NATO would begin modernizing the alliance's nuclear armory by the end of this year if the U.S. and the Soviet Union do not reach an agreement to curb intermediate-range nuclear weapons. For a moment after the plane cut its jet engines, there was a stunned silence among about 100 female peace demonstrators from the camp set up outside the base for 26 months to protest the new U.S. weapons. Then came screams as the women pounded the base's perimeter fence with their fists in outraged frustration. Several groups linked arms and wept. Cried one anguished demonstrator: "It's here, it's bloody well here."

It was a long way from the Caribbean, but the impact of the invasion of Grenada was still reverberating among U.S. allies. With various shades of reprobation, every major West European capital continued to express disapproval of Washington's resort to military might. Bat in an unspoken consensus, there appeared to be a determination to prevent differences over U.S. policy in the Caribbean from spilling into the Atlantic Alliance's crucial and most immediate challenge: persuading a dubious public, particularly in West Germany, to accept the new U.S.-controlled nuclear weapons on their soil. The invasion did not make that task any easier. It came, said a West German Foreign Ministry official, "at exactly the time when we have to convince the public that the U.S. is serious in its attempts to pursue nonmilitary solutions to international problems."

The arrival of the first cruise launchers was symbolic of the West European effort to keep the two issues separate. Although the West German government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl maintained its formal opposition to the invasion, Kohl last week expressed "understanding" for the U.S. move. West German Government Spokesman Juergen Sudhoff explained that "additional elements," such as the discovery of armed Cuban construction workers and the Grenadian Governor-General Sir Paul Scoon's plea for help, had cast new light on the events.

Similarly, French President null Mitterrand had quickly and dryly criticized the U.S. action, but in private French officials were taking a more detached view. Said one: "If the Americans withdraw quickly and set up some truly democratic institutions, Grenada could fade mercifully into the political background within a month." Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi made it clear that the invasion of Grenada would not affect Italy's commitment to the NATO decision.

No nation, though, was in a greater quandary than Britain. From Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on down, the country was seething. "I am totally and utterly against Communism and terrorism," Thatcher told listeners on a popular radio phone-in program. "But if you are going to pronounce a new law that wherever Communism reigns against the will of the people, the U.S. shall enter, then we are going to have really terrible wars in the world." Thatcher made the same point six times during the broadcast.

For once, it seemed, the government, the Labor opposition and the public were united in bitter resentment against the U.S. A London Sunday Times poll showed that 73% believed the U.S. President would violate the terms of cruise missile deployment by firing them even if the British government objected.

Behind the scenes, many of Thatcher's ministers were showing deep alarm over what they considered Reagan's anti-Communist obsessions. Said a senior Cabinet official: "One is beginning to agonize about what the President is likely to do next." A top-level diplomat added that "the U.S. must stop believing its own propaganda about Reds under every bed."

In West Germany only the leftist opposition could afford to indulge in that kind of indignation, and the Social Democrats proceeded to revel in it. Said SPD Foreign Policy Spokesman Karsten Voigt: "Now those who argue that we have to trust the Reagan Administration are told, 'Just look at Grenada.' " He added that the invasion would strengthen the demand for some kind of veto power over the American finger on the trigger controlling nuclear weapons in West Germany. Said Peace Movement Leader Jo Leinen: "Instead of associating ourselves with the aggressive militaristic tendencies in Washington, we have to try to go our own way."

That point was made more dramatically at a huge peace demonstration in The Hague, where protesters held up a banner that said simply TODAY GRENADA, TOMORROW WOENSDRECHT! In The Netherlands, Woensdrecht has become a household name as the site of the NATO airbase where cruise missiles are scheduled to be installed. In Brussels, within hours of the Grenada invasion, a crowd of about 200 leftist demonstrators swarmed around the U.S. embassy in angry protest.

Amid the chorus of condemnation, there were also voices of support. In France, the opposition rightists and centrists generally approved of Reagan's decision. Former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing said that he was impressed with evidence that the Cubans were building an airfield far in excess of Grenada's own needs. Declared former Premier Raymond Barre: "I don't approve of military intervention in any country, but the U.S. cannot accept a destabilization process in the Caribbean." More biting was the comment from the conservative Berliner Morgenpost. Reflecting well-founded concern over the erosion of popular support for NATO, it observed that "in Europe some people urgently wait for a criticizable decision by President Reagan as an alibi for their own creeping withdrawal from the Atlantic Alliance." --By Frederick Painton. Reported by Jordan Bonfante/Paris and Gary Lee/Bonn, with other bureaus

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante, Gary Lee This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.