BERLIN — In the face of legal, moral and political resistance, Chancellor Helmut Kohl's government is inching toward a decision that would permit German military forces to take part in international peacekeeping activities.
An important policy shift in this direction could come out of a parliamentary debate scheduled for Jan. 14. That debate is expected to center on a possible role for German forces in assisting the U.N.-sponsored relief operations in Somalia, although the use of Luftwaffe personnel in enforcing a much-discussed "no-fly zone" for Serbian aircraft over Bosnia is also likely to be weighed.
Any agreement about the deployment of German soldiers in these areas would almost certainly be a precedent that would effectively end restrictions on the role of Germany's military since the end of World War II.
Ambiguous wording in Germany's constitution has for years been interpreted as forbidding the deployment of its forces anywhere outside the 16-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization region or for any purpose other than the defense of German territory.
Germany's Western allies, many of them victims of previous German military adventurism, were content with this stance throughout the Cold War. But with the collapse of communism, German unification and new security demands, they have pressured Bonn to share more equally in the risks of peacekeeping outside Europe.
There was little understanding--and considerable resentment--about the absence of German forces on the allied side of the Gulf War, even though the Kohl government tried to compensate by providing $12 billion to help finance the operation and dispatching 18 fighter jets to Turkey, on Iraq's northern border.
"More (money) will never be enough," a former senior U.S. State Department official warned a group of German policy-makers after that war.
The Jan. 14 debate was sparked last month by a clearly impatient Kohl. Worried that Germany would once again be left out of military operations undertaken by its closest NATO allies, he broke with tradition and the longstanding interpretation of the constitution, offering the United Nations up to 1,500 armed German troops to help distribute aid in Somalia. The country's international reputation was at stake, he said.
At a news conference, Kohl said he will personally preside over the effort to steer the initiative through the parliamentary warren of legal and political obstacles.
