Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 5, 1990 TAG: 9007050146
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: LONDON LENGTH: Medium
"Helmut, what would you answer on this one?" Bush asked.
When Kohl suggested an answer, Bush turned to his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, who agreed that response meshed nicely with U.S. policy.
Moments later, the first question reporters posed was the one Bush had pinpointed. And Kohl, with Bush at his side, responded on cue: "Nobody," he declared, "wants to link the question of national unity with changes in existing borders. And nobody is permitted to doubt my attitude there."
The ease with which the two leaders agreed to handle the potentially explosive question reflects one of the president's most important assets as he begins a summit meeting today with his NATO counterparts at a critical juncture for the alliance.
With Kohl, and with other NATO leaders, Bush has developed what aides see as unusually smooth personal relationships that enable him to take up difficult issues with a minimum of strain or tension.
This week's meeting of the leaders of the 16 NATO members behind closed doors at Lancaster House, a posh, old-style British conference center, will impose a particularly difficult test of Bush's hands-on approach to foreign policy.
The overall goal is to sort out the impact of the stunning changes in Eastern Europe's political structures and, in particular, adjust the alliance's military strategy to take into account the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact.
While Bush's deliberately hesitant relationship with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher lacks the ideological simpatico that she and former President Reagan built on the foundation of their shared conservatism, Bush is said by aides to have succeeded in striking up easygoing ties with a number of the politicians he will meet with today and Friday, particularly Kohl, French President Francois Mitterrand, and even Thatcher.
"With Thatcher, Bush's relationship is not what the Reagan-Thatcher relationship was but it is pretty solid. With Mitterrand, it is probably better than any American president has ever had. And with Kohl, it's very close," said a senior State Department official, speaking privately.
"Bush feels it's the personal chemistry he can establish that will serve him well in the long term when there are ideas that need to be pushed," said a former White House official.
by CNB