Word: summiter
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Reagan professed to consider the summit a success, but he had little to back up his claim. On the subject of the Persian Gulf, for example, the seven issued a general statement championing "freedom of navigation." There was not a word of specific support for the U.S. plan to register Kuwaiti tankers under the American flag and have U.S. warships escort them through the gulf. The Americans made much afterward of the warships that Britain and France for some time have maintained in the gulf, but the U.S. got nothing new from its allies. In a joint statement...
...economics, the ostensible subject of the summit, Treasury Secretary James Baker remarked, "I can't think of any major item . . . that we came here wanting that we did not get." True, but only because the U.S. knew better than to press the other six for any strong action. Washington had hoped that Japan and West Germany would move to stimulate their domestic economies to ward off a growing threat of world recession and, not incidentally, reduce their towering trade surpluses, which are the counterpart of the U.S. deficit. Japan did announce a stimulative package before the summit, but Britain...
...fared better at a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, that immediately followed the summit. The 16 countries approved the so-called double-zero plan under which the U.S. and the Soviet Union would scrap all intermediate-range (600 miles to 3,400 miles) and short-range (300 miles to 600 miles) nuclear missiles in Europe. Their communique did not even hint at the agonizing intra-European debate over whether this move would make the Continent more vulnerable to Soviet invasion...
Reagan was more optimistic at his Venice press conference, indicating that "there is an increased opportunity for a summit" and giving Gorbachev credit for wanting a missile pact. Said Reagan: "He is faced with an economic problem in his country that has been aggravated by the military buildup . . . and I believe that he has some pretty practical reasons for why he would like to see a successful outcome...
...renewed attempt to talk the dollar down in order to reduce the U.S. trade deficit, and the greenback promptly sank. White House Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater issued two clarifications asserting that the President wanted the dollar to stabilize. Reagan will have to do better than that at a summit with Gorbachev, lest the Soviet leader steal all the credit for the missile agreement that should be the proudest international achievement of the Reagan presidency...