Bush Gorbachev Summit

When Bush and Gorbachev meet they plan to have an unstructured agenda. Why not structure it? Why go thousands of miles at tremendous cost just to put one's feet up to talk? And for two days? Make it longer. First of all, they should bury the Cold War in the deepest bowels of the Mediterranean. Then the two leaders could make some preliminary proposals for arms cuts. Throw fear into those death merchants, the arms manufacturers. Their swan song is long overdue. In the last three years Gorbachev has been more peace oriented than either former President Reagan or Bush.

Irony. On the same day that Bush tells Gorbachev that the Soviets must cut military spending, the United States stiff-arms a Soviet proposal for further, negotiated, mutual deep cuts in strategic weapons (July 31). Bush says that the "demilitarization" of the Soviet economy is essential to genuine reform. But the demilitarization of the U.S. economy? That, as presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said of any new arms pacts, would be "premature." So it's full speed ahead for the B-2 and other weapons.

The U.S.-Soviet summit conference scheduled to begin in four weeks in Moscow is now likely to be postponed, a victim of the twin crises in Lithuania and the Persian Gulf, the White House said Monday. "Clearly, the trip to Moscow is up in the air. I think there's a general skepticism now that we would go," White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said. The White House also held out the prospects that stepped-up economic aid to the Soviet Union may be in jeopardy.

The United States and the Soviet Union reached a compromise Saturday on their treaty to reduce conventional armed forces in Europe, clearing away the last significant obstacle to a Moscow summit meeting between President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. No date for a summit has been set, but officials expect that it will take place sometime this summer.

The U.S.-Soviet summit conference scheduled to begin in four weeks in Moscow is now likely to be postponed, a victim of the twin crises in Lithuania and the Persian Gulf, the White House said Monday. "Clearly, the trip to Moscow is up in the air. I think there's a general skepticism now that we would go," White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said. The White House also held out the prospects that stepped-up economic aid to the Soviet Union may be in jeopardy.

In a flurry of diplomatic maneuvers surrounding the confrontation with Iraq, President Bush has agreed to cancel $7.1 billion in debts Egypt owes the United States for military equipment, is considering a massive new sale of weapons to Israel and may meet within the week with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Administration officials said Friday. At the same time, U.S.