Thatcher, Kohl Split on Missile Talks

DEIDESHEIM, West Germany--Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain failed yesterday to persuade Chancellor Helmut Kohl to drop his demand that the superpowers begin talks soon on cutting short-range nuclear missiles.

The two leaders, trying to reach a compromise on a stalemate that has split the NATO alliance, described their talks as frank and intensive. Both admitted they could not solve the crisis.

"We still have quite a lot of work to do," Kohl told reporters during a news conference with Thatcher after an afternoon of talks.

But Kohl said he was optimistic the disagreement could be resolved before a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Brussels on May 29.

Thatcher also expressed optimism, but stuck strongly to the U.S. British position that rules out early talks with the Soviets on short-range nuclear weapons.

"Strength must continue not only in words. Strength has to be translated into weaponry," she said.

Thatcher's visit to the Rhineland-Palatinate town of Deidesheim was aimed at persuading Kohl to drop his government's insistence on early talks, a demand that has placed him in a battle of wills with Thatcher and President Bush.

The West Germans believe superpower arms talks should be attempted on a broad scale because of the current disarmament climate in Moscow.

Washington and London maintain that talks on tactical nuclear arsenals should not begin as long as the Warsaw Pact alliance has a superiority in conventional forces.

The United States and Britain also argue that it would be hard to stop the talks from progressing to the point where they would address the total elimination of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe--a goal of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Under NATO's flexible response policy, the allies could respond to a Soviet bloc attack with either conventional or nuclear weapons.

Thatcher said elimination of the weapons would mean that the "Soviet Union will have achieved its objective of getting land-based nuclear weapons out of Europe. This I believe would be disastrous for us."

Thatcher at one point appeared to speculate whether Kohl was in favor of an outright elimination of tactical nuclear weapons. "I'm sure Mr. Kohl will correct me if I have misunderstood him on this issue," she said.

Kohl responded by having his interpreter read a line from his speech to parliament last week in which he rejected elimination of the tactical nuclear weapons under the present balance of military forces in Europe.

But Kohl also was adamant that the West German position on early talks be acknowledged.

Most of NATO's short-range nuclear weapons are based in West Germany and would be used exclusively on German soil in a war.

Kohl said he hoped a "joint document which takes our special situation into account" could be prepared at the Brussels summit.

"And that has nothing at all to do with the Germans having become unreliable or anything like that," Kohl said, referring to suggestions that West Germany is no longer following agreed-upon NATO doctrine.

Kohl, faced with uncertain election prospects next year, also wants to delay until at least 1992 a decision on modernization and deployment of rockets to replace NATO's aging short-range nuclear arsenal.