Summit appeal by ex-heads

Press, 12 November 1985, Page 10

Summit appeal by ex-heads

NZPA-AP Hamburg Thirty former world leaders appealed yesterday to the President of the United States, Mr Ronald Reagan, and the Soviet Communist Party leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, to reach an arms control accord at their summit meeting in Geneva next week. Urging the super-Powers’ leaders to demonstrate “courageous leadership and global vision,” the group called on the United States and the Soviet Union to respect arms treaties that they had already signed. The statement was issued at the end of a week-end meeting in Hamburg the seven-member executive committee of the Interaction Council, a group of former world leaders established in 1983.

The statement also urged the super-Powers to “institutionalise their meetings on a regular basis, in order to create and maintain a political atmosphere conducive to progress towards the solution to world and regional problems.”

The executive committee of the Interaction Council is made up of: Takeo Fukuda, a former Prime Minister of Japan; Malcolm Fraser, former Prime Minister of Australia; Manea Manescu, the former Prime Minister of Rumania; LieutenantGeneral Olusegun Obasanjo, a former President of Nigeria; Dr Misael Pastrana Borrero, a former President of Colombia; Helmut Schmidt, the former West German Chancellor, and Dr Kurt Waldheim, the Austrian former Secretary-Gen-eral of the United Nations.