Word: summiteer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany, the summit host, and Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher of Britain, Brian Mulroney of Canada, Bettino Craxi of Italy and Yasuhiro Nakasone of Japan were willing to accommodate Reagan. But Mitterrand, who appeared to relish playing France's traditional role of odd man out at economic summits, adamantly refused to set an early--or any--date for trade negotiations. He voiced varied objections: that the talks had to be carefully prepared; that they ought to be linked to a monetary-reform conference, about which the U.S. is dubious; most of all, that trade talks might...
Shortly before the last formal summit session on Saturday morning, Kohl brought Reagan and Mitterrand together for an unscheduled private talk. The U.S. President could not budge his French colleague, and the final summit communique noted only that "most" participants wanted trade talks in early 1986. In context, that bland wording was an unprecedented admission of lack of unanimity. Mitterrand then appeared at a press conference to proclaim, "I have my responsibilities toward France, toward French farm producers and toward Europe. I am defending a just cause...
...impasse over trade talks prevented any searching discussion of what had been expected to be another major topic at the summit: how to keep an American economic slowdown from triggering world recession. That will require faster growth in other countries, and some gingerly efforts are under way to promote it, but there was little analysis in Bonn of whether those efforts are adequate. At the formal sessions and in the final communique, the heads of government merely described the policies they are already following and pledged themselves to such unexceptionable goals as fighting inflation and creating jobs. Such cascades...
Overall, the results of the summit seemed at best meager for a long-prepared meeting of world leaders. But that is becoming the way with these annual sessions. Reagan and his senior aides regarded the first two that the President attended as important tests of his ability to cut a respectable figure on the world stage, but have been let down by the last three. Says one adviser bluntly: "It's getting to be a bore...
...summits have become media events. The West German government accredited 3,858 print and TV journalists from 53 nations to last week's summit; the White House provided them with a 32-page schedule covering virtually every step to be taken by President Reagan and the White House press corps during the first four days in Bonn. NBC Correspondent Irving R. Levine clambered onto a restaurant table so cameras could present a clear shot of him delivering his report with the Rhine in the background. The reporters raced among briefings often conducted simultaneously in five languages and scrambled for every...