THE US yesterday called for a new formal security charter between NATO and Russia and said NATO would launch entry negotiations with several east European countries at an alliance summit early next year.
In a speech in the southern German city of Stuttgart, the US Secretary of State, Mr Warren Christopher, also backed the German Chancellor, Dr Kohl's controversial drive for European integration, describing reunited Germany as Europe's "symbol and catalyst for the integration it is trying to achieve".
Mr Christopher's speech came a day after the Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov, described Germany as a "world power" and on the eve of Dr Kohl's visit to an ailing President Yeltsin in Moscow.
Mr Christopher gave a speech on the 50th anniversary of an address in the same city by the then secretary of state, Mr James Byrnes, on reconstructing Europe after the second World War. Mr Byrnes made clear then the United, States would remain engaged in Europe. He said Washington wanted to see vanquished Germany unified and reintegrated into Europe and able to help the continent's economic revival.
"We seek a fundamentally new relationship between Russia and the new NATO ... NATO's cooperation with Russia should be expressed in a formal charter," Mr Christopher said. The charter would provide for joint military exercises and a permanent crisis management mechanism.
Enlarging on the charter idea, the German Foreign Minister, Mr Klaus Kinkel, said the blueprint should be complete by the end of the year.
It has emerged from a week of hectic Germany centred diplomacy in separate meetings Dr Kohl has hosted talks with the French President, the US and Russian Foreign Ministers, has visited Ukraine and is due in Moscow this morning - that the West is eager to forge a new security pact with Moscow before expanding NATO to let in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
Mr Kinkel said that along with European unification, the Russia NATO relationship was the "most important task of the future".
All the signs are that Germany is embarking on a push as the key bridge builder between the West and NATO on the one hand and Russia and the former Warsaw Pact on the other.
The aim is to square the circle of opening NATO to the trio of former Warsaw Pact members while keeping Russia sweet and sealing the new security charter between NATO and the Kremlin.
Russia argues that the OSCE rather than NATO should be the key security forum for post cold war Europe. But while the Germans are talking less of NATO expansion and more about an accommodation with Russia, Mr Christopher was unequivocal.
"NATO enlargement is on track and it will happen," he said. "At the 1997 summit we should invite several partners to begin accession negotiations."