Mrs Thatcher’s Moscow visit

Press, 7 April 1987, Page 24

Mrs Thatcher’s Moscow visit

Mrs Thatcher, the British Prime Minister, and Mr Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, both have good reasons for being satisfied with Mrs Thatcher’s visit to Moscow. Mrs Thatcher was the first Western leader to pronounce approval of Mr Gorbachev. Had she found that the years of power had changed Mr Gorbachev markedly so that she felt that she could no longer “do business” with him, the attitudes of the Americans to the talks the United States Secretary of State, Mr Shultz, will have in Moscow on nuclear arms, and the attitudes of the Europeans to the proposed removal of intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe, would have been damaged. As it was, Mrs Thatcher said afterwards that she liked and respected Mr Gorbachev and that she would implicitly accept his word. Mrs Thatcher might soon face an election, and a great deal of the comment about the visit has naturally focused on how the visit will affect her standing with the British public. The reaction so far appears to be favourable and an opinion survey gave Mrs Thatcher’s Conservatives more than 40 per cent of the vote. Her visit to Moscow more or less coincided with the visit of the labour leader, Mr Kinnock, to the United States, where he appears to have been unsuccessful in persuading the United States Administration or politicians that Labour’s policy of seeing American nuclear missiles removed from Britain was not something the Americans should worry about. The British Labour Party will not be happy with the contrasts that will be drawn between Mrs Thatcher’s and Mr Kinnock’s visits. The latest suggestion is that the British will not go to the polls next month but might do so in June or in the northern autumn. The Conservatives have every reason to be pleased with the impact of Mrs Thatcher’s visit and will face an election more confidently because of it. The results of the visit are intangible, the

main one being that Mrs Thatcher and Mr Gorbachev set up a good relationship. Mrs Thatcher tried to get Mr Gorbachev to agree to linking short-range nuclear weapons with the intermediate-range missile deal but this was robustly resisted. Mrs Thatcher condemned the Soviet approach to developing an economy and in return got an earful on the evils capitalism allows. Mrs Thatcher carried the banner for human rights but was told that this could not be linked to progress on nuclear disarmament. Mrs Thatcher feels that a more open society in the Soviet Union would cause the West to trust the Soviet Union more. Mr Gorbachev made the point that trust and truthfulness are not the prerogative of one system of government. An undoubted reformer himself, Mr Gorbachev was not about to allow the British to set the agenda for the reform of the Soviet Union. Despite the fundamental differences, the visit must be judged a success. If short-range nuclear weapons are going to be included .in a package — and there might be a dangerous imbalance, causing instability, if they are not — the Soviet Union will want to talk to the United States about the issue, not to Britain, not even to help Mrs Thatcher to get reelected. The success lay partly in the mood in which the talks were held. There was an openness about Mrs Thatcher’s appearances and the way in which she was questioned publicly and mixed with people. Mrs Thatcher and Mr Gorbachev had 13 hours of talks together and Mrs Thatcher said afterwards that they were the most valuable that she had had with any national leader. For the rest of the world the most hopeful result of the meeting was probably the development of some sort of trust. There is something reassuring about the thought of 13 hours of talks between two people whose political beliefs are so markedly opposed. The Thatcher visit augurs well for the visit of Mr Shultz.