Word: gorbachevized
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...Soviet leader buttonholed Bush again at the state dinner Thursday night and argued that if the U.S. President was serious about wanting perestroika to succeed, he must provide economic help. He made a third try at a one-on-one session Friday morning. This time Bush yielded. He told Gorbachev he would sign a trade treaty but would not send it to Congress until the U.S.S.R. passed the emigration law. He added that he expected Gorbachev to show the same understanding of U.S. concerns about Lithuania that the White House was showing for the Kremlin's economic needs, but apparently...
...Gorbachev got the deal, says one U.S. official, in part because "he played Bush's game, appealing to him personally in the one-on-one sessions and at dinner," rather than in group negotiations or at press conferences. Another reason: Gorbachev's aides dropped heavy hints that they would hold up a grain- purchase agreement that the Administration and American farmers very much wanted. After more than an hour's delay in the treaty-signing ceremony, Bush appeared with Gorbachev in the East Room of the White House to announce agreements on both grain and trade...
None of the above, replied the Soviets. As Yuri Dubinin, former Soviet ambassador to the U.S., once put it, "Gorbachev has only one hobby: perestroika." The visitor from the Kremlin politely declined to go to Kennebunkport at all, or even to stay overnight at Camp David. The most he would agree to was eight hours of informal talks with Bush there Saturday. Still, the leaders and their aides did shed coats and ties in Maryland, and Gorbachev told a few of the salty jokes that Bush enjoys. The President took Gorbachev on a tour in a golf cart, and later...
...lack of a deeper rapport should be no surprise. For one thing, there has been little time to develop any. Counting Gorbachev's trip to New York City in December 1988, when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly and visited briefly with Reagan and the then President-elect, he and Bush have seen each other only three times in the past year and a half, and until last week they had been alone only for about an hour. They have not even heard each other's voices very often. Though Bush incessantly telephones other foreign leaders, he has called...
More important, Bush and Gorbachev are men of totally different upbringing, education, habits and turn of mind. Bush loves sports and entertaining friends. Gorbachev is far more formal. Says one U.S. official who studies him closely: "He's not at all stiff, and he's able to make an occasional wisecrack, but he rarely takes his jacket off or puts his feet up." When Ronald Reagan told his patented funny stories, says one American who attended their summits, "Gorbachev would roll his eyes, and you could see him thinking 'Oh, no, not another story!' " The Soviet President enjoys discussing...