Word: summiter
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...line bureaucrats by the score and wooing popular support by touring Soviet farms and factories in the manner of a handshaking, baby-kissing Western politician. He broke the long, frozen silence between the nuclear superpowers by agreeing to meet President Ronald Reagan in Geneva for the first Soviet-American summit in six years. Their November talks in front of a cozy fire moved none of the substantive issues closer to solution. On the paramount question of arms control, though both have proposed a 50% cut in offensive nuclear weapons, agreement is still being blocked primarily by Reagan's insistence...
...Reagan became the first President to confer the full powers of his office voluntarily on his Vice President, George Bush, though only for eight hours, while surgeons removed a cancerous growth from Reagan's colon. The President recovered quickly and apparently completely, but apart from the summit his political momentum seemed to wane. Reagan's success in pushing a tax-reform bill through the House at year's end demonstrated that he is hardly a lame duck yet. Nonetheless, whether he can win a final bill at all close to his desires--or indeed any bill...
...ascension of Gorbachev to the Soviet leadership could eventually rival for long-range importance to the world the sweeping changes Deng is pushing through in China. But for all the panache he displayed on taking power and all the headlines and television time he and Reagan commanded at the summit, Gorbachev's impact on history by year's end was still far more potential than actual. The freshness and vigor of his personal style far outweighed the importance of any changes he had made in Soviet foreign or domestic policy. Indeed, though Gorbachev, like Deng, has made pepping...
Similarly, in dealing with the outside world, Gorbachev seemed bent not on introducing new policies so much as trying to make more palatable the ones he inherited. At his Geneva summit meeting with Reagan, he proved himself an able spokesman for a depressingly familiar set of attitudes, objectives and one-sided demands. The U.S.S.R. might withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, but only if that country remained under Soviet control; the U.S. must ultimately remove all its intermediate-range missiles from Western Europe, even though the Soviets dominate that category; Washington must cancel Star Wars despite a huge Soviet buildup...
...Senate. Reagan's long-standing desire to speak directly to the Soviet people will be realized on New Year's Day, when he and Party Leader Mikhail Gorbachev give reciprocal radio and television addresses to each other's nations; but when they sit down for their second summit later in the year, a world yearning for progress on arms control will be looking for more than hopeful words and handshakes. All in all, predicts New York's Democratic Senator Daniel Moynihan, 1986 is shaping up as "crisis-ridden and tumultuous...