Word: mikhail
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...what he does and says in the months to come, Bush hopes to help Mikhail Gorbachev fend off the charge that he "lost Germany." At the same time, the U.S. President is doing everything he can to bolster Helmut Kohl for the West German elections in December. Kohl's coalition is committed to staying in NATO. Some of his Social Democratic opponents have talked about saying thanks and goodbye to foreign troops and perhaps even embracing neutrality. The Bush Administration believes a NATO without Germany would quickly lead to a Europe without NATO, and then . . . well, anything could happen...
...Soviet Union is categorically opposed, demanding neutrality as a condition for unity. West German leaders have proposed that the new state remain in NATO, though Western troops and bases could be kept out of what is now East Germany. "We cannot agree to that," says President Mikhail Gorbachev. "It is absolutely out of the question." The U.S.S.R. has made German neutrality an article of faith ever since Stalin's days, even though Soviet fears might be better calmed by a Germany answerable to a larger military command than standing...
Popularly elected he was not, but Mikhail Gorbachev nevertheless swore himself in last week as the first real President the U.S.S.R. has ever had. As the parliamentarians at the third session of the Congress of People's Deputies rose to their feet, Gorbachev walked from his seat to a small table by a red hammer-and-sickle flag. Placing his right hand on a copy of the Soviet constitution, he intoned, "I solemnly swear to serve faithfully the peoples of our country, to strictly abide by the constitution of the U.S.S.R., to guarantee the rights and freedoms of our citizens...
...this measure, Bush's foreign policy has got it right almost every time, the notable exception being China. The President's "don't gloat" response to communism's demise has exactly satisfied Mikhail Gorbachev's needs -- which at this time are also America's. So, too, the Administration's Middle East policy has been adroit. A combination of private pressure and thinly veiled public threats has pushed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir so far into a corner that even he may finally have no alternative but to give peace a chance...
Only a few years ago, such a scathing attack on Jews could never have appeared in a Russian newspaper independent of the government-controlled anti-Jewish campaign. Ironically, it is the freedoms of glasnost, Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of openness, that allows popular hatred of Russian Jews to be aired...