Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 8, 1990 TAG: 9005080100
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
"Our goal is clear - we don't want a denuclearized Germany," Manfred Woerner told reporters.
Woerner, who conferred with President Bush before leaving for a NATO meeting in Canada, said it appears that despite weekend talks over the future of Germany Moscow has not yet accepted the Western allies' insistence that a reunited Germany be a member of NATO.
Asked after his 30-minute White House meeting if the Soviet Union has reconciled itself to the idea, he replied, "As far as I know, not yet."
Woerner said the alliance has a lot of work to do in defining more clearly its political and military roles amid revolutionary changes.
In light of Bush's call for a NATO summit to address these questions, Woerner said the meeting will "most likely" be held in London the first half of July, but the dates are not yet set.
Earlier, at a breakfast meeting with reporters, the NATO chief said he fully expected the Soviets to press for stripping nuclear weapons from a united Germany - an option he acknowledged has support among some left-leaning political parties in Europe.
But he said that a nuclear free zone inside Europe would "not increase, but weaken, security."
"The essential question is not where nuclear weapons are stationed, the essential question is where they can hit. . . . We are in favor of reducing nuclear weapons to an absolute minimum . . . but not denuclearizing completely," he said.
At the White House, Woerner also rejected a Soviet suggestion for dual German membership in both NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
"To be a member of both pacts is just neutrality without a word," the former German defense minister said.
Woerner was in Washington for a round of discussions with administration officials prior to a meeting in Calgary, Canada, of NATO's Nuclear Planning Group. The panel is composed of the defense ministers from the alliance's 16 member nations, with the exceptions of Iceland and France.
Bush's announcement last Thursday that he was scrapping plans to modernize short-range Lance nuclear missiles in Europe and to upgrade nuclear artillery shells should be a prime topic at the session.
The updated weapons - designed to fall on East German soil - were deemed politically impossible to deploy, given the developments in Eastern Europe and the prospects for German unification.
The allies must decide when and how they will address Bush's call for East-West talks on the future of short-range nuclear weapons. The president's initiative left unaddressed the future of those short-range weapons currently based in Western Europe.
by CNB