U.S.-Soviet talks aim at ‘understanding’

Press, 2 November 1989, Page 8

U.S.-Soviet talks aim at ‘understanding’

NZPA-Reuter Washington The United States President, George Bush, says his two-day highseas summit with the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, will enhance understanding between the two super-Powers but produce few of the accords that traditionally accompany such gatherings. In spite of earlier United States opposition to a meeting with the Kreinlin chief unless a formal accord could be signed, Mr Bush and Mr Gorbachev will meet on United States and Soviet ships in the Mediterranean Sea on December 23. “I think it’s the right thing to be doing,” Mr Bush told reporters at the White House yesterday. “There was a time when I wasn’t sure that it was, but with this rapidity of.

change (in Eastern Europe) I don’t want to miss something.” The use of naval vessels for the talks — a first for super-power summitry — raised questions about security for the world’s two most powerful leaders. The Mediterranean in recent years has seen military clashes between the United States and Libya and a terrorist hijacking of the Italian cruiseliner Achille Lauro. But a United States official dismissed questions about security by saying “an attack on the United States and the Soviet Union seems a little far out” since it would draw the wrath of both nations. Officials of both governments insisted the agenda would be wide

open for the talks, but Mr Bush said he wanted to discuss the economic and political changes sweeping most of Eastern Europe and the Kremlin’s attitudes towards them. While a discussion of arms control was likely to come up, it was agreed the details would wait until a formal summit set for next year in the United States, Mr Bush said. “Neither of us. anticipate that substantial agreements and decisions will emerge,” Mr Bush said of next month’s talks.

In Moscow, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze described the talks as useful and vital because they would foster further development and deepening of positive changes in Soviet-United States relations.