Bush to meet Thatcher, Queen

Press, 2 June 1989, Page 6

Bush to meet Thatcher, Queen

NZPA-Reuter London President George Bush, winding up a triumphant diplomatic tour of western Europe, is due to have talks today with the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and visit Buckingham Palace for lunch with the Queen. Mr Bush, who arrived from West Germany on Wednesday night, will be crowning a week-long trip during which he took firm leadership of the N.A.T.O. alliance and grabbed the publicopinion spotlight from the Soviet President, Mi-

khail Gorbachev, with a major new arms initiative. ■ “I think the Germans, at least the ones I talked to, were very upbeat about what happened in Brussels,” Mr Bush told reporters during the flight to London. He referred to the display of unity by alliance’s leaders on how to respond to Mr Gorbachev’s “charm” offensive. In a compromise that won Mr Bush credit and praise for crafting, N.A.T.O. healed a bitter two-year rift between the

United States and Britain on one side and West Germany on the other by adopting a new strategy to reduce conventional and nuclear weapons in Europe. The West German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, who faces difficult elections next year and who had been under pressure to act to rid his country of N.A.T.O. nuclear missiles, came away from the summit satisfied. “We had differences — they’ve been ironed out,” a buoyant Mr Bush, aged 64, remarked before leaving West Germany.

As if to emphasise the point, the President concluded his visit by joining Mr Kohl on a scenic boat ride on the Rhine. Administration officials said Mr Bush’s meeting with Mrs Thatcher was designed to keep the West’s new diplomatic offensive rolling. The two leaders planned a joint news conference after their talks. In an important policy speech in Mainz, West Germany, Mr Bush said the ultimate goal of the offensive was a free, unified Europe and the full integration of the Soviet

Union into the world community. Mr Bush told Mr Gorbachev rhetorically that he could give a powerful signal of his desire to finish the Cold War by ending the division of Berlin. “Nowhere is the division of East and West seen more clearly than in Berlin,” he said. “There, a brutal wall cuts neighbour from neighbour and brother from brother. That wall stands as a monument to the failure of communism. It must come down."