Friendly Advice

Kohl tries to avert a row

Few Western leaders have more in common than Ronald Reagan and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Despite a sizable difference in their ages (Reagan is 72, Kohl is 53), both are folksy, outgoing politicians who share profoundly conservative but optimistic values. Both men feel strongly that the West must upgrade its nuclear defenses if it is to remain free in the face of new Soviet military challenges. Even though neither can speak the other's language, they also instinctively like each other.

The warmth was still evident last week, as Kohl paid a 25-hour visit to the White House in the wake of his decisive victory in West Germany's March 6 national elections. Before discussing affairs of state, the two leaders engaged in amiable small talk about such things as the heavy rains in California and the recent visit to the U.S. of Queen Elizabeth II. But the Chancellor was also the bearer of a serious message to the President. Kohl's friendly advice: the U.S. and its West European allies may once again be on a collision course over how to deal with the Soviets.

Kohl's less-than-glad tidings were delivered on behalf of the entire ten-nation European Council, of which he currently holds the rotating presidency. The Europeans are frankly worried that the U.S. is once again considering a tightening of the screws on East-West trade in the ideological war between Washington and Moscow. They fear that the use of the trade weapon may turn up on the agenda of next month's summit meeting of the seven leading industrial nations at Williamsburg, Va.* Kohl's delicate diplomatic mission was intended to head off that possibility. If the idea of punitive trade restrictions were to arise at Williamsburg, it could touch off a row within the NATO alliance as serious as the one that exploded last summer over U.S. attempts to block a planned natural gas pipeline from the Soviet Union to Western Europe. Said a senior U.S. official prior to Kohl's arrival in Washington: "The old pipeline battle lines are forming again."

Kohl conveyed the Europeans' concern to Reagan during three hours of meetings that included a White House lunch. The bluff West German Chancellor made much the same point over separate dinner sessions with Secretary of State George Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. Among other things, Kohl stressed that the upcoming summit should deal with more global issues, such as high international interest rates and the dangers of protectionism. Said Kohl: "Williamsburg can be both a realistic summit and a signal of optimism to the world."

Whatever happens at Williamsburg, the U.S. is undoubtedly going to continue to look askance at the volume and substance of East-West trade. A focus for that critical view is the NATO alliance's Coordinating Committee on Export Controls, or COCOM, a body created in 1950 to monitor and restrict the flow of strategic Western industrial goods to the Warsaw Pact nations. It is virtually powerless today. Complains a senior Reagan Administration official: "COCOM is nothing but a junior Italian official and ten clerks."

Some U.S. officials are now proposing that COCOM be given the resources and the authority to examine the potential military use of any Western technology before it is sold to the Soviet Union. Western Europe, as Kohl tactfully made known during his brief Washington foray, is leery of that notion. The Chancellor's soul mate in the White House may have other ideas.

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