"A Great Day for Germany"

By Bruce W. Nelan

If it's not one problem, it's another. After surrendering his party's monopoly , on power last week, Mikhail Gorbachev turned his attention to a separate issue that he and his countrymen find painful: the incipient unification of Germany. On Saturday West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl arrived in Moscow for two hours of talks with the Soviet President. Emerging from their meeting, Kohl declared that Gorbachev had promised to respect a united Germany. Kohl and his Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, said a plan for unification, in concert with France, Britain, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, would be ready by this year. It was, Kohl said, "a great day for Germany."

During the weeks that Soviet leaders have been preoccupied with remaking their party and government, the pressure for unity inside the two Germanys has mounted faster than was predicted even in this age of sudden European transformations. In Bonn last week, Kohl won his coalition government's approval for talks with East Berlin on a monetary union that would make the deutsche mark the currency in both Germanys. He also set up a Cabinet-level committee to devise specific plans and legislation for political unification. Discussions on the merger would begin with the new East German government to be elected on March 18.

Even the caretaker Communist-led government in East Berlin, which previously argued for a separate socialist existence in some kind of confederal relationship, has thrown in its hand. Unification is possible, Prime Minister Hans Modrow says, but only if the newly formed state remains neutral, unaffiliated with either NATO or the Warsaw Pact. Bonn and its allies reject that idea but counter with one presented by Genscher. A unified Germany should remain in NATO, he proposed, but allied troops or military structures should stay out of the areas that are now East Germany. In Moscow for his own set of talks, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker hinted that Washington may be flexible on a united Germany's status within NATO, but he said, "Who knows how all this will turn out?" Last week the Soviet Union refused to accept Genscher's formulation.

None of Germany's neighbors have been cheering the prospect of its rebirth as the largest European state and economy west of the U.S.S.R. The Soviets, with their carefully nurtured memories of World War II, have been the most negative of all. Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze has referred to "the revival of sinister shadows of the past" and said the world needs guarantees that the danger of war will never again arise in Germany. The Soviet Union's own borders will have to be firmly secured, Politburo member Alexander Yakovlev insisted last week, reflecting Soviet irritation at Kohl for refusing to renounce claims to prewar territories now incorporated into Poland. "We are in favor of a European Germany," Yakovlev said, "not a German Europe."

Kohl's mission to Moscow, arranged at his urgent request, was one of reassurance. "To those who say the Germans want to create a Fourth Reich," he said before his departure, "there are two clear answers. First, after 40 years we have proved ourselves to be serious and reliable partners in Europe, and second, we are a country that is prepared to strengthen the European Parliament." He carried to Gorbachev a promise that Bonn would take Soviet security interests into account and his assurance that he still favored a step-by-step plan for unification. He built his case on the argument that his unity proposal would prevent regional instability by providing "economic reconstruction" for a pauperized East Germany.

One of the forces driving the rush toward unification is apprehension. Many of the 16 million East Germans fear that unity will be delayed, that West Germany's generous benefits for arrivals from the East will be cut, that their own economy will implode. So they flee in vast numbers to the West: 344,000 last year, an additional 58,000 last month, almost 2,000 every day.

Most of those leaving now are the young and people with skills to offer in the West's job market. Their departure further slows production in East German factories and cripples social services, increasing the pressure on others to follow them. As its population flows west, the East's economic crisis has deepened to the point that simple absorption seems as likely as formal unification. Kohl's call for monetary unity could cause a host of technical problems, but he made it for political reasons -- to prop up the East and give its people enough hope for the future to keep them at home.

Next month's election could slow the westward movement if a strong, unity- oriented noncommunist government emerges. With that in mind, West German parties have taken to the campaign trail and are boosting their East German offshoots with funds, equipment and advice. Kohl's Christian Democratic Union is backing a coalition of three center-right parties. He and 50 other CDU politicians will attend rallies in East Berlin, Magdeburg, Leipzig and other cities. The West's Social Democratic Party has been supporting its Eastern counterpart, with former Chancellor Willy Brandt, the Nobel laureate who invented the conciliatory policy of Ostpolitik, drawing hundreds of thousands of East Germans to hear his speeches.

An opinion poll released last week indicated that the East's SPD, with unification at the top of its platform, was favored by 38% of eligible voters. Second, at a minuscule 7%, is the Party of Democratic Socialism, the former Communists. The East German CDU, one of the three parties backed by Kohl's party, attracted only 5%. Other samplings indicate that some 76% of East Germans favor unification.

No matter how much Germans support a merger, Bonn officials fear that the Soviet Union, with 390,000 troops based on East German soil, could prevent it. SPD strategist Egon Bahr suggests that Modrow's call for neutrality may be worth looking at. If the Warsaw Pact dissolves quickly and if NATO becomes a political grouping, Bahr argues, neutrality would lose its meaning in "a Europe free of alliances," where "there would be nobody to be neutral against." Most Germans, however, resist the idea of loosening ties with the West and doubt the feasibility of neutralizing such a large state.

Moscow still stands behind Modrow's demand for neutrality, but it also wants to reconvene the 35-nation Helsinki Conference this year to produce a treaty that would legally end World War II and guarantee all existing European frontiers. Washington now seems ready to go along. If such a conference is held, it might create a Europe in which there is technically no one to be neutral -- or belligerent -- against. But the Soviets will need more than a one-day visit and soothing words from Helmut Kohl to be convinced of that.

With reporting by Paul Hofheinz/Moscow and James O. Jackson/Bonn