Word: schmidts
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Pierre Trudeau, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Italian Premier Giulio Andreotti. A notable absentee: French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who boycotted the dinner. Reason: he was piqued that British Laborite Roy Jenkins had been invited to both Callaghan's dinner and some of the summit sessions in his capacity as president of the European Community's Brussels-based commission. Like his predecessors, Giscard is determined to keep the Common Market and its representatives from getting too uppity...
Germany's Schmidt publicly committed himself to a 5% annual rate of economic growth, even if it requires stimulating his economy a bit more than he would prefer. Most of the other leaders had been pressing a reluctant Schmidt to do more to help world economic recovery...
...while it had been feared that bitter feelings between Carter and Schmidt might sour the meeting's mood. In fact, there were reports from Bonn that Schmidt was in a combative spirit and had even boasted to aides that he had "at least fifteen tough questions I will put to him [Carter], and we'll see how he manages those." The Chancellor made no secret of his distaste for what he regards as Carter's preachy moralism on such issues as human rights and nuclear proliferation. Nor did he conceal his bitter resentment over what he felt...
...surprisingly, the summit's final communique, issued before hundreds of newsmen and staffers, produced no blueprint for curing the world's economic and political ills. A British official suggested that the conference's greatest success was simply that it had taken place. As Schmidt noted at one point, "We will leave with clearer ideas about each other's problems...
Intimate Brainstorming. After the summit Carter was to remain in London, ostensibly to discuss Berlin with Callaghan, Schmidt and Giscard. In fact, that was merely a pretext (also used by Henry Kissinger) to enable the West's four major military powers to hold an intimate brainstorming session about pressing global political issues. Since there are currently no major problems over Berlin, the Big Four were expected to discuss the Middle East, conventional arms exports, nuclear proliferation and the SALT talks...