Reagan mission to Europeans

Press, 3 June 1982, Page 9

Reagan mission to Europeans

NZPA-Reuter Washington

President Reagan embarks on a major foreign-policy mission today to convince America's allies that the United States is willing to help combat world recession and that his policies towards the Soviet Union are firm but not inflexible.

Mr Reagan will go first to the Versailles economic summit meeting where he will have to defend his controversial high interest rate policies to the leaders of six other industrial countries. France, West Germany, Britain. Canada, Japan, and Italy. Also at the summit meeting will be Belgium speaking for the six smaller European Economic Community States not directly represented. He faces close questioning on why United States interest rates have remained abnormally high and why his economic policies have not led the United States out of a 10-month recession that has spilled over into other industrial economies.

In Bonn next week, the President will try to dispel, his sabre-rattling. anti-Com-munist image which caused alarm in Europe, and to reassure a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit meeting that he is a man of peace.

United States officials point to his recent initiatives

on negotiating nuclear arms limits with the Soviet Union, including the announcement that Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (Start) will begin on June 29, as convincing evidence. Administration officials concede that Mr Reagan's personal impact .on Europeans during his nineday tour will be as important as the diplomatic and economic problems he intends to discuss.

Another underlying element is the hope the trip will boost Mr Reagan’s standing at home. Opinion polls show his popularity at its lowest since he took office in January last year.

In an interview with European television correspondents yesterday Mr Reagan outlined some of his proposals for the Versailles and Bonn meetings.

He said he would ask West European leaders to agree to temporary restraints on trade and credits to the Soviet Union in the hope of persuading Moscow to change what he called its aggressive policies. But he said he was not advocating a total quarantine or a return to the EastWest Cold War of the 19505. He confidently predicted that he and President Leonid Brezhnev would hold summit talks.

Mr Reagan said his intention to meet Mr Brezhnev would be scrapped only if the

Soviet Union made an overt move, such as invading Poland.

The Secretary of State (Mr Alexander Haig) told reporters yesterday that Western Europe had been won over by Mr Reagan’s leadership arid his moves to reduce United States and Soviet nuclear arsenals.

"Clearly a great deal of enthusiastic support has been given to President Reagan’s arms control policies,” he said.

On economic issues to be discussed at Versailles this week-end, Mr Reagan said he would stress the importance of stable economies and currencies in the United States and Western Europe. Trade protectionism also would be an important topic and he intended to urge renewed efforts to remove obstacles to open and free trade, he said.

Mr Reagan and the British Prime Minister (Mrs Margaret Thatcher) will, discuss the Falkland Islands conflict before the opening of the Versailles summit meeting on Friday night (Saturday N.Z. time). The President will go to London later-for more talks -with British Government officials.•>

He will also go to Rome to meet Pope John Paul and go to West Berlin before returning to Washington on June 11. .