Bending over Backward

Carter tries to make friends

Skilled sharpshooters tightened their grips on telescopic-sighted rifles atop the terminal at Cologne-Bonn airport as Air Force One flew out of clear skies on its 7 1/2-hour flight from Washington. Soldiers with submachine guns crouched behind sandbags near the runways. In Bonn itself, some 15,000 police officers, including 900 plainclothesmen, took up fixed positions or mingled with crowds. The security troops were, in fact, more numerous than any assembly of civilian spectators who turned out to see Jimmy Carter on his first presidential visit to the West German capital.

The police precautions were prompted by West Germany's concern over the possibility of some sensational new outrage by the Baader-Meinhof gang of political terrorists. Yet the tense atmosphere seemed to symbolize the fact that Carter is embroiled not only with the Soviets but also with some allies, namely the West Germans. Now he had come to attend a seven-nation economic summit conference and, coincidentally, to see if the Bonn-Washington coolness could be remedied.

The friction dates back to Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's pronouncement shortly before the 1976 election that he wanted to see President Gerald Ford defeat Carter ("It was stupid," a chancellery aide now admits). Since then, Carter and Schmidt have wrangled over nuclear non-proliferation policy (the Germans want to sell fuel-reprocessing plants), Washington's public crusade on human rights (the Germans think it's preachy and unsophisticated) and economic policy (the Germans think Washington must cut oil imports to strengthen the dollar). Only last week, when asked about his relations with Carter in a television show, the theatrical Schmidt sighed, lifted an eyebrow and paused--gestures clearly belying his answer: "They are very good." When Carter claimed on the eve of his trip that his schedule would not permit his acceptance of Schmidt's invitation to dine with him at the Chancellor's home in Hamburg, Schmidt was livid. "It's insulting," he told aides. "But what else could one expect, I suppose." Calming, he asked: "Am I overreacting?" Nobody said he was.

Despite such tensions, Schmidt made the first gesture in trying to repair relations with Carter by unexpectedly appearing at the airport to welcome him to Bonn. The Chancellor and his wife Hannelore rode with the President, Rosalynn and Amy in an armored U.S. limousine to the modest residence of U.S. Ambassador Walter Stoessel, where the Carters spent four nights. Schmidt assumed the role of gracious national host, and Carter proved a properly courteous guest.

Carter's first full day in Bonn was a busy one. Early in the morning, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance reported at a breakfast with the President on the lack of substantial SALT II progress in his meetings at Geneva with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Carter then made a courtesy call on President Walter Scheel at the white-stuccoed, 113-year-old Villa Hammerschmidt along the Rhine. In crisp Teutonic style, Scheel barked at the assembled honor guard, "Good morning, soldiers of the guard"; the troops shouted in reply, "Good morning, Mr. President." Rosalynn and Amy went off to tour the gabled 18th century house where Ludwig van Beethoven was born and listened to Cologne Pianist Juergen Glaus play Beethoven's 32 Variations on an Original Theme on the master's own grand piano.

The serious business of the two-day state visit began when Carter and Schmidt met for three hours in Schmidt's Chancellery, a modernistic complex surrounded by fences topped with barbed wire. The mood of the discussions was described as frank, detailed and without rancor. Both men, said one participant, "were bending over backward" to avoid friction.

Nevertheless, the predictable disagreements were evident. Schmidt argued that the U.S. must do more to stop the decline of the dollar abroad, cut back its energy consumption and control inflation. Carter said he was working hard to do just that, but contended that West Germany must do more to spur its own economy as part of the cooperative effort to stabilize international economic conditions. Carter stoutly defended his emphasis on human rights, and Schmidt now agreed with the President's criticisms of the Soviet trials of dissidents. In general, said one Chancellery official about the talks, "there were no surprises, pleasant or unpleasant."

On a visit to Bonn's pink and white rococo town hall, Carter addressed a crowd of some 4,000 people from the building's balcony overlooking Market Place. The response was polite, rather than loud, even when Carter declared, "Our security is your security, and yours is ours. That is why the United States is increasing its commitment to NATO and will help to defend your land as if it were our own." And in honor of Bonn's musical hero, he ended by quoting in German a verse, written by Schiller, from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Next day, Carter and Schmidt went to inspect the power behind the U.S. commitment. They stood side by side in a Jeep as they rode down a landing strip at the Weisbaden-Erbenheim Air Base and surveyed an array of impressive military hardware: Cobra helicopters, M 109 howitzers, Leopard and M60A1 battle tanks. Carter told more than 4,000 troops, "You are the point of the Western sword."

In the historic city of Frankfurt, more than 15,000 friendly but reserved Germans gathered in front of the 15th century town hall. Carter echoed the message carried in some fashion to Germany by every President since Harry Truman: "An attack on your soil would be an attack on our soil."*

Schmidt and Carter then flew separately to Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin-the Chancellor making the point that he has the right under four-power agreements to visit the divided city. East German officials, who deny that right, responded by ordering a temporary slowdown of traffic along the autobahn through their territory into Berlin.

As expected, the ever jittery citizens of West Berlin showed their appreciation of the U.S. by giving Carter a warm reception. He stirred none of the passions aroused by John Kennedy in 1963, but hundreds of thousands of Berliners lined the streets between the Platz der Luftbriicke and the Brandenburg Gate to watch him pass. At the grim wall that divides the city, Carter, Rosalynn and Amy mounted a platform along the border and looked through field glasses at the forbidding, obstacle-studded no man's zone and at East German guards staring back. During the night, the East Germans had whitewashed about 200 yds. of the wall to cover up anti-Communist graffiti.

Carter drew on this incident to make one of his most effective answers to questions from an audience of some 1,000 people as he held one of his familiar "town meetings" at West Berlin's "Kongress-halle." He noted that "15 years ago when John Kennedy came here, they [the East Germans] covered the wall with a drape. Now at 2:30 a.m. the East Germans whitewashed it and tried to cover the ugly spectacle again. But I don't think anything can hide the deprivation of human rights represented by that wall." The audience, wearing earphones to get instant translation of his words, applauded loudly.

But, asked an elderly woman living on a pension, "how long will we have to live with the wall?" Carter scored points for candor when he replied softly, "I don't know. I can't give you a better answer, but that's the truth."

The President deftly handled a question about his attitude toward Communist political parties in Europe. He said flatly that he would "prefer that Communism would be minimal in the Western world." But the U.S., he added, has no intention of interfering in the politics of other nations. "We trust the judgment of free people in free nations to make their own determination that Communism is not in their best interest," he said. And the way to limit the growth of Communism, he emphasized, was "to make democracy work." Repeatedly, Carter urged his listeners to speak up for human rights, including the right of citizens to disagree with actions of their governments. And again, he vowed: "We consider an attack on Western Europe to be the same as an attack on the U.S. Whatever happens, Berlin will remain free."

Despite fears of some West German officials that Carter might make a gaffe in such an open forum, the town meeting showed that the President is more lucid and at ease in a conversational setting than when delivering formal speeches. From Berlin, Carter returned to Bonn, where his ability to argue persuasively across a table was to be tested in a tough forum: the two-day meeting of seven Western leaders seeking ways to stabilize the world economy. And if, after the Berlin visit, Helmut Schmidt was not yet Carter's warmest friend, he could hardly help having been impressed by his tireless guest.

*He resisted an impish suggestion allegedly made by Gerald Rafshoon, his new communications adviser, to evoke John Kennedy's famed "Ich bin ein Berliner" by declaring in Frankfurt: "Ich bin ein Frankfurter."

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