TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121189/12118900.036

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 15.0 KB | 287 lines

                                                                                EAST-WEST, Page 34

COVER STORIES

Turning Visions Into Reality


In the stormy Mediterranean, George Bush gives Mikhail Gorbachev
his proposals for changing from cold war to cooperation. But
will events outstrip the two leaders' ability

By Richard Lacayo


    By the time George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in
Malta, there was no longer any pretense that this was to be a
meeting where they simply sat back and talked. How do you put
your feet up when the deck beneath you is trembling and the
winds are howling, in Marsaxlokk Bay and throughout the tattered
Soviet empire? This first Bush-Gorbachev summit, which the
American President initially proposed as a way to restart the
becalmed U.S.-Soviet relationship, was now also the first to
take place in the uncertain new world ushered in by the
upheavals shaking Eastern Europe. And if this meeting was to be
a step in shaping the future, there could be no more appropriate
setting than at sea, even a sea as wild as the one last weekend
around Malta. In a world that seemed to be dissolving, where
better to meet than in a place with no boundary lines, no
familiar landmarks -- and no firm footing?

    For Bush, a man most comfortable with the prudent and
predictable, the desire to give ballast to the wildly careening
events of recent weeks may have been one reason he arrived in
Malta with a long list of concrete proposals. Bush also seemed
determined to prove to public opinion in the U.S. and Europe
that the American President was just as committed to building
the peace as his popular Soviet counterpart.

    At the Reykjavik summit in 1986, Gorbachev opened the
encounter with a list of sweeping arms proposals that kept
Ronald Reagan off balance for the rest of their time together.
This time it was Bush who produced the printed sheet of
specifics almost as soon as he and Gorbachev sat down in the
book-lined cardroom of the Soviet cruise liner Maxim Gorky.
Putting before him 112 typed pages of items, the President
started out nervously, his voice tight. Gorbachev, sitting
across from him, listened intently. When Bush finished speaking,
nearly one hour later, he had set out what one White House
official called "a lot of meat."

    In fact much of it consisted of offerings that had been put
forward elsewhere, but there were also some choicer cuts. The
President reiterated his proposal that the two nations wrap up
the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks in Geneva before the next
summit -- which he suggested be held in Washington in June --
and sign an agreement to cut conventional forces in Europe by
the end of 1990. Bush offered to end U.S. production of binary
chemical weapons when other nations capable of producing
chemical killers enter into an international convention banning
them. That represents a change from the Administration's
position that it would continue to produce a few binary weapons
as a defense against outlaw states.

    To help the hard-pressed Soviet economy, Bush promised to
waive the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which restricts U.S.-Soviet
trade, as soon as the Supreme Soviet concludes legislation
permitting free emigration. For the interim, he proposed that
the two nations negotiate a new trade treaty in time for the
June summit. He also vowed to support observer status for the
Soviet Union at the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade) talks, a move long sought by the Soviets to help
integrate the U.S.S.R. into the world economic system.

    The toughest part of the President's message concerned
Central America. Bush told Gorbachev: If the Nicaraguan
Sandinistas have told you they are not supplying weapons to El
Salvador's rebels, they are misleading you. He warned the Soviet
leader not to miscalculate how seriously Washington regarded the
escalating violence in Latin America.

    Gorbachev seemed a bit stunned that Bush's overall
proposals were so detailed and specific, not to mention
numerous. After sitting silent during most of the lengthy
presentation, the Soviet leader looked the President in the eye
and told him, "I have heard you say that you want perestroika
to succeed, but frankly I didn't know this. Now I know. Now I
have something tangible."

    For weeks before the Malta meeting, White House aides --
and Bush himself -- had been putting a damper on expectations.
But the President was determined all the while to arrive with
proposals that would interest the Soviets and encourage the
success of their reforms without turning the meeting into a
wholesale renegotiation of the postwar order. Such a deal would
be futile in any case. At Yalta in 1945 the victorious Allies
could draw lines at will upon war-ravaged Europe. Now the
ability of both superpowers to dictate events has been sharply
circumscribed.

    The pell-mell surge of events in Eastern Europe left Moscow
to make a virtue of necessity, giving its blessing to an erosion
of Communist power that it could do little to reverse in any
case. Meanwhile, the U.S. is in no better position to impose its
will on its robust NATO allies, especially a West Germany that
has become the engine of change on the Continent, pouring the
deutsche mark into Eastern Europe the way the dollar once flowed
to the Western nations under the Marshall Plan. All through the
summit the German question hung in the air, although the two
leaders agreed to keep their public remarks on Eastern Europe
to a minimum.

    On Sunday, in the kind of head-spinning turn of events that
is now the norm in the Soviet bloc, East Germany's Egon Krenz
resigned as Communist Party leader -- while retaining his post
as leader of the state -- and his entire Politburo and Central
Committee stepped down as well. Asked about German unification
at Sunday's press conference, Gorbachev said some questions must
be left for "history" to decide and cautioned against doing
"anything to accelerate these changes artificially." That call
for prudence seemed ironic coming from the statesman who had
done more than any other in this half of the century to speed
up the process of history, including the transformation of
Germany.

    The evidence that Gorbachev's drive for democracy and
openness is serious seemed to grow even as the problems of the
Communist world worsened. En route to Malta, Gorbachev stopped
in Rome to visit John Paul II. His momentous meeting with the
Pope marked the beginning of the end of more than 70 years of
antagonism between the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church.
The first Soviet Communist Party boss to set foot on Vatican
soil, Gorbachev conferred with the Pope for an unexpectedly long
75 minutes in the library of the 16th century Apostolic Palace.
Addressing John Paul II as "Your Holiness" -- no small gesture
for the leader of a nation and party formally pledged to atheism
-- Gorbachev promised that the Supreme Soviet would "shortly"
pass a law guaranteeing religious freedom for all believers.

    Gorbachev also agreed to reopen diplomatic relations with
the Vatican and discussed a possible papal visit to the Soviet
Union sometime in the future. John Paul hedged on that, making
his acceptance conditional upon some evidence of real
improvement in the situation of Soviet Catholics. But the Pope
did offer his endorsement of perestroika, all the while pressing
home his "expectation" that Ukrainian Catholics would be allowed
to exercise their faith fully and openly. The Ukrainian Church,
which follows the Eastern liturgy but claims the Pope as its
spiritual leader, was banned and driven underground by Stalin
in 1946.

    When the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV decided to seek the
pardon of Pope Gregory VII in 1077, he stood barefoot for three
days in the snow outside the papal quarters in Canossa, Italy.
Gorbachev's concordat with the church was no less significant
in its way. But there was a crucial difference: as is so often
the case with Gorbachev, he achieved his reconciliation without
humiliation. As he had done before, the Soviet leader let the
ongoing crisis of the Communist system serve as an opportunity
to push his nation toward a broader vision of the future. "We
need spiritual values," Gorbachev declared the day before the
Vatican meeting. "We need a revolution of the mind."

    Gorbachev made those remarks in Rome's city hall, where the
Treaty of Rome establishing the European Community was signed
in 1957. Although 32 years late to the party, he once again
proclaimed his support of a European "commonwealth of sovereign
democratic states" and urged that a 35-nation Helsinki
conference be convened next year to find solutions to "common
European problems."

    Before departing from Italy on Friday afternoon, Gorbachev
also offered a revisionist view of the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion
of Czechoslovakia that crushed the reforms of the Prague
Spring. Earlier that day, the new Politburo of the Czechoslovak
Communist Party branded the invasion as wrong. Asked at a Milan
press conference what he thought about that, Gorbachev tiptoed
toward an apology, though without going all the way. The Prague
Spring was "an acceptable movement for democracy, renewal and
humanization of society," he said. "It was right then and is
right now."

    George Bush arrived in the Maltese capital of Valletta on
Friday morning, looking tired after an all-night flight during
which he was regularly kept apprised of the progress of the
attempted coup in the Philippines. It was the President's
brother William who first suggested the rocky island some 200
miles north of Libya as a site for the meeting, having visited
last September. The idea for a shipboard summit, away from the
mobs of reporters and aides, came from the President himself,
a former Navy flyer who still likes to slam his speedboat
through the water around his summer home in Kennebunkport, Me.
The President may have regretted the lack of back-up sites soon
after his arrival, when he met with Maltese Prime Minister
Edward French Adami and President Vincent Tabone. Emerging from
the meeting, Bush glanced through a window at what was by that
time a lashing storm outside. "I believe it will clear up," he
declared.

    Bush later flew by helicopter to the U.S.S. Belknap, his
headquarters for the summit and the planned site of Sunday's
meetings. The 547-ft. guided-missile cruiser was anchored about
1,000 yds. offshore in Marsaxlokk Bay, an industrial basin on
the southeast coast of Malta. U.S. Navy and Maltese patrol boats
trying to circle the ship bounced crazily on waves that were
already cresting at a wind-whipped 5 ft. to 7 ft. About 500 yds.
away was the larger Soviet cruiser Slava, anchored nearer to the
mouth of the harbor. At dockside was the Maxim Gorky, the
25,000-ton Soviet cruise ship housing the Soviet delegation.

    Overnight the weather turned worse. A gale with winds of up
to 60 m.p.h. slashed down the narrow alleys of the ancient port
town. Pedestrians had to lean into the wind to avoid being blown
over, and waves lashing the quay exploded into plumes of spray
that flew 30 ft. into the air. Two tugboats were called out to
keep the Slava from slipping its main anchor.

    By Saturday morning the Soviets had decided to shift the
day's opening meeting from the Slava to the heavier and more
stable Gorky, where Gorbachev had spent the night. Traveling
from the Belknap in a small launch, the President brought with
him a group including Secretary of State James Baker, chief of
staff John Sununu, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and
top Baker aide Robert Zoellick. Among those with Gorbachev were
Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, former Soviet Ambassador
to the U.S. Anatoly Dobrynin and international-affairs adviser
Alexander Yakovlev. As they entered the cardroom where the
session would be held, an effervescent Bush swore that he had
enjoyed a good night's sleep on the bouncing Belknap. "Piece of
cake," he announced. (Later both he and Baker were spotted
wearing medical seasickness patches behind their ears.) While
Gorbachev joked about the rough weather, Bush nodded to the seas
and said, "Calming down -- it's a good sign." Then he said,
"Let's go to work."

    As he ran down his inventory of offers, the President at
first seemed nervous but began to sound more confident and
relaxed, as he promoted everything from an international
conference next year on global warming to an increased exchange
of college students and a joint endorsement of the idea of
holding the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin. Echoing a
long-standing U.S. complaint about the Soviets, he urged them
to publish information on their military-force structure, budget
and weapons production. He handed Gorbachev a list of
possibilities for cooperation between the two nations, including
advice on such classically capitalist institutions as banking
systems and a stock market. "We're happy to pursue any of these
issues with you," Bush said, beaming.

    Bush also gave Gorbachev a list of about 20 names of Soviet
citizens who were seeking to emigrate. On Sunday Baker was to
give Shevardnadze a list of 95 more names. At summits throughout
the 1970s and much of the '80s, the U.S. regularly presented
such lists to the Soviet side, commonly to no avail. This time
Bush recognized that the Soviet Union has made "great strides"
in resolving individual cases. "Let's set a goal," Bush
suggested, "that by next year's summit we won't have another
list to give you."

    Bush's earnest presentation of his overall proposals had a
weight to it that the Soviets acknowledged. Said an American
aide who was at the table: "The President wanted to get the
message across that he didn't just support perestroika; he
wanted to back up his support." Gorbachev listened closely,
nodding vigorously at times. His reply to the President's offers
was warm, though mostly general. "Gorbachev completely caught
the spirit," said a U.S. official. "There was nothing from which
he dissented."

    Amid the 16-ft. seas and gale-force winds that had pounded
the island all day, Bush and his party returned to the Belknap
Saturday afternoon, their launch rolling so heavily that it had
to make several passes before it connected successfully with the
American warship. Eventually the weather forced cancellation of
the afternoon session and the joint dinner planned for that
night. Bush was left stranded on the Belknap, looking helplessly
over the short distance of rough water that separated him from
Gorbachev, the man he had traveled thousands of miles to see.

    Yet the smiles on Sunday -- and Gorbachev's thanks for the
state of Soviet-American "joint enterprise" -- proved that Bush
had achieved the basic purpose of his get-acquainted meeting.
"He dumped it all on the table and made his point," said one of
his aides. After months of taking criticism for dithering, the
U.S. President had made it clear that he too intends to do
business with Mikhail Gorbachev.


-- Cathy Booth/Rome and Michael Duffy, Dan Goodgame and
Christopher Ogden/Valletta