Word: schmidts
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...visit to West Germany. But when Valéry Giscard d'Estaing alighted from his presidential Mystère jet last week, the 21-gun salute that greeted him merely punctuated the close Franco-German ties that have grown particularly strong since Giscard and West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt came to power within eleven days of each other in 1974. Although it rained during most of the five-day visit, there were few visible clouds over what British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has sarcastically called the "Franco-German axis...
Only in its ceremonial trappings did Giscard's state visit differ from numerous earlier trips to West Germany for consultations with Schmidt. In fact "Lieber Helmut" and "Cher Valéry," as they call each other, meet at least six times a year and talk on the telephone about once a week. Their friendship, dating back to the early '70s, when both served as Finance Ministers, rests largely on shared views and temperaments. Both leaders are fiscal conservatives and political pragmatists. In addition, both men face tough re-election battles within the next ten months, leading some cynics...
After two days of brutally frank talks, a Soviet concession. "In a difficult world situation, we had I difficult talks." So said West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt last week, summarizing a mission that had been fraught with perils. Washington had done little to hide its misgivings about the first visit by a Western leader to the Soviet capital since the invasion of Afghanistan six months ago. Like some of Bonn's allies, the U.S. was apprehensive that Schmidt might undermine Western solidarity by appearing as an appeaser, eager for detente for Europe at any price. Schmidt's political...
...Kremlin's evident jubilation over his trip was scarcely reassuring. He had asked that the meeting be treated as a "working visit," with a minimum of pomp. When a tense but determined Schmidt stepped down from his white and blue Luftwaffe jet at Moscow's Vnukovo II Airport, President Leonid Brezhnev, Premier Alexei Kosygin and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko were on hand, along with a goose-stepping honor guard. Belying rumors about his ill health, Brezhnev strolled briskly across the Tarmac to greet Schmidt. The ceremony was clearly intended to convey the Kremlin's satisfaction that...
...Neither Schmidt nor his nervous allies had cause to worry about the summit's outcome. After two days of intense and often brutally frank discussion with Brezhnev and his top aides, the Chancellor returned home with his reputation as a statesman intact, and with a promise of progress on arms-reduction talks. The Soviets, reported Schmidt, had abandoned two key preconditions for entering into negotiations with the U.S. on limiting the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe. "This is not a breakthrough," Schmidt told the Bundestag on his return, but "it opens a chance of preventing an unfettered...