1 NATO's commander has asked Germany for a detailed list of hardware and forces it can provide if the alliance has to evacuate U.N. peacekeepers from Bosnia, the government said Tuesday.
2 U.S. Army Gen. George A. Joulwan stressed in a letter to the German government 'that this request in no way means there will be a deployment' of alliance forces soon to Bosnia, said Dieter Vogel, spokesman for Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
3 Vogel said 'NATO and Germany are still convinced that the continued presence of blue helmets is by far preferred over their possible withdrawal.'
4 Still, Joulwan's letter shows that NATO is moving to finalize contingency plans for an evacuation should countries contributing to the 24,000-strong U.N. mission decide to leave.
5 NATO asked Germany and other allied nations in December to state broadly what they could offer if the alliance is asked to provide cover for a withdrawal of the U.N. troops.
6 The United States has promised up to 25,000 troops. Germany and the other members of the 16-strong North Atlantic Treaty Organization also said they would help out.
7 According to Vogel, Joulwan's latest letter asks specifically which units of the German armed forces could be made ready if needed.
8 Vogel did not say whether the same letter went to other allied nations. Officials at NATO headquarters said Joulwan was seeking more details from more than one member.
9 They stressed that replies to the commander's request were not binding on the allies. NATO nations were expected to discuss this week plans for sending requests for formal commitments from the member nations.
10 Bonn's offer marks a shift in a policy of avoiding military involvement in regions that were occupied by the Nazis. German troops killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs during World War II.
11 All the same, whether German troops would ever be deployed to the Balkans is an open question.
12 Any deployment would have to be approved by the Bundestag, the lawmaking lower house of parliament, and opposition parties say they would try to prevent German troops from being sent.
13 Showing sensitivity over the Nazi years, Kohl's government has also said it would not send any ground troops to the Balkans.
14 Instead, the government has said it could offer Tornado warplanes whose sole task would be jamming Serb radar over Bosnia, a field hospital that would be set up in neighboring Croatia, and vessels to patrol the Adriatic.

NATO asked Germany and other allied nations in December to state broadly what they could offer if the alliance is asked to provide cover for a withdrawal of the U . N . troops .
what they could offer
How would these allied nations go about gathering these resources?