Bush names more of team

Press, 23 November 1988, Page 10

Bush names more of team

NZPA-Reuter Washington The United States Presi-dent-elect Bush, still putting the finishing touches to his economic team, focuses on foreign affairs today with a day-trip to Texas to meet the Mexican President-elect, Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

The trip “is to symbolise the importance of our relations with our neighbour Mexico,” a Bush spokeswoman, Sheila Tate, said of the planned two hours of meetings in Houston. “The object is to let the two men get to know each other,” said Enrique Berruga, the press secretary at Mexico’s Embassy in Washington. Mr Salinas will be sworn in on December 1 and Mr Bush will take the oath of office on January 20.

Washington underlined its keen interest in the economic and political stability of its southern neighbour by offering a SUS3.S billion ($5.38 billion) line of credit last month to help Mexico get over a slump in the price of oil, its major export. Mr Bush yesterday named a former Treasury official, Richard Darman, aged 45, as his Budget

chief. Mr Bush vowed to cut the Budget deficit and renewed his pledge to resist tax increases. "Cutting the size of the federal deficit is a top priority,” Mr Bush said. Mr Bush, who has said the incumbent Treasury Secretary, Nicholas Brady, would keep his post and serve as the Administration’s chief economic spokesman, hopes.that assembling his economic team quickly will reassure financial markets worried about a Budget deficit that reached SUSISS billion ($238 billion) in the last fiscal year. Mr Bush has selected a former Treasury Secretary, James Baker, as his Secretary of State and the New Hampshire. Governor, John Sununu, as White House chief of staff.

He also told a news conference yesterday that the Attorney-General, Richard Thornburgh, and the Education Secretary, Lauro Cavazos, would stay on in his Cabinet.

Yesterday the “New York Times” reported Mr Bush planned to appoint the former Senator John Tower, of Texas, as Defence Secretary.