Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 11, 1990 TAG: 9007110486
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HOUSTON LENGTH: Medium
The summit ordered up a six-month damage-assessment study to review the Soviet economy and recommend ways to target Western aid.
Satisfied with their 11th-hour compromises on farm subsidies and the environment, the leaders quickly concluded their 16th annual summit this morning.
"The American people would have a very hard time understanding aid to the Soviet Union in the form of loans while $5 billion a year is being given to Cuba, missiles are trained on U.S. cities and 18 percent of the Soviet GNP goes to defense," Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady said today.
The matter of Soviet aid was sure to cause reverberations because an aide to Mikhail Gorbachev, Georgy Shakhnazarov, had said in advance that preconditions to Western aid were unacceptable. "We aren't taking orders," he said.
A foreign-language draft statement read this way:
"Prospects for fundamental and long-term economic aid could improve if the Soviet Union comes to a substantial change in resources from military to civilian production, and ends the support to those states which create regional conflict." The last passage was a thinly disguised reference to Cuba.
Brady told ABC the Soviets must implement these changes before the United States is willing to extend direct economic assistance.
Officials said trade negotiators reached a compromise agricultural agreement in the early hours today and the seven heads of government were to review it at their final session at Rice University.
The United States insisted on language calling for across-the-board cuts in all categories of farm subsidies. This was included but the agreement also contained ambiguous language acceptable to the reluctant Europeans.
British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd acknowledged there had been some hard words. "But it will be a more successful summit than if everybody had come here determined to sing from the beginning a unified hymn of praise."
In a self-congratulatory final communique the world leaders patted themselves on the back for a global economy that was still chugging along, although at a decidedly slow pace.
by CNB