Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [489]
All this pressure was by now having an effect. In particular, Chancellor Kohl was retreating. In April a new German position on SNF modernization and negotiation was extensively leaked before any of the allies — other than the Americans — were informed. The German position paper did not rule out a ‘third zero’, did not call on the Soviet Union unilaterally to reduce its SNF levels to those of NATO and cast doubt on SNF modernization.
I had acrimonious discussions with Chancellor Kohl behind the stage-managed friendliness of our meeting at Deidesheim at the end of April.* Chancellor Kohl gave a lengthy justification for Germany’s recent conduct. He wanted NATO to discuss a mandate for negotiations on SNF, though he said he was absolutely opposed to a ‘third zero’. He said that it was simply not sustainable politically in Germany to argue that those nuclear weapons which most directly affected Germany should be the only category not subject to negotiation.
I said that I would begin by reminding Chancellor Kohl of some of the background. He had been the one who had originally proposed that there should be an early NATO summit to take the decision on modernization and I had supported him. I read out to him the joint statement which we had issued at Frankfurt. We had not been informed of the German Government’s new position until several days after it had been leaked to the press. NATO had to have SNF and they must be modernized, as he himself had agreed recently. We could not become embroiled in SNF negotiations which would lead inexorably to a ‘third zero’. I told Chancellor Kohl about the reports we had been getting of the Soviet Union’s real views and intentions. They were delighted that they had gained an advantage with the modernization of their own SNF and that we were delaying ours. They were also confident that they could influence opinion in West Germany in favour of SNF negotiations. I repeated that Britain and the United States were absolutely opposed to negotiations on SNF and would remain so. Our present forces were an irreducible minimum if we were to sustain the strategy of flexible response and they would in due course have to be modernized. Even if a decision to deploy the Follow-On to LANCE (FOTL) were postponed, there must be clear evidence at the forthcoming summit of NATO support for the US development programme. In fact, the German Government’s actions had put NATO under severe strain.
Chancellor Kohl began to get agitated. He said he did not need any lectures about NATO, that he believed in flexible response and repeated his opposition to a ‘third zero’. But the fact was that Germany was more affected than anyone else by SNF and that therefore German interests should be given priority. I retorted that, contrary to what he said, SNF did not affect only Germany. Our troops were on German soil. It had never been possible to rely on all the NATO allies; there were always weak links. But hitherto the United States, Britain and Germany had constituted the real strength of NATO.
At this Chancellor Kohl became still more worked up. He said that for years he had been attacked as the vassal of the Americans. Now he was suddenly being branded a traitor. He repeated that he did not believe that once the INF agreement had been reached you could resist negotiations on SNF. But he would think again about what I had said and would be in touch with the Americans about it. I reported on our discussion in a message to President Bush, concluding that ‘provided Britain and the United States remain absolutely firm, we can still achieve a satisfactory outcome at the [NATO] summit’.
In the run up to the NATO summit the newspapers continued to focus on splits in the alliance. This was particularly galling because we should have been celebrating NATO’s fortieth anniversary and highlighting the success of our strategy of securing peace through strength. Apart from the Americans