Turning Visions Into Reality

By Richard Lacayo

By the time George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in Malta, there was no longer any pretense that this was to be a meeting where they simply sat back and talked. How do you put your feet up when the deck beneath you is trembling and the winds are howling, in Marsaxlokk Bay and throughout the tattered Soviet empire? This first Bush-Gorbachev summit, which the American President initially proposed as a way to restart the becalmed U.S.-Soviet relationship, was now also the first to take place in the uncertain new world ushered in by the upheavals shaking Eastern Europe. And if this meeting was to be a step in shaping the future, there could be no more appropriate setting than at sea, even a sea as wild as the one last weekend around Malta. In a world that seemed to be dissolving, where better to meet than in a place with no boundary lines, no familiar landmarks -- and no firm footing?

For Bush, a man most comfortable with the prudent and predictable, the desire to give ballast to the wildly careening events of recent weeks may have been one reason he arrived in Malta with a long list of concrete proposals. Bush also seemed determined to prove to public opinion in the U.S. and Europe that the American President was just as committed to building the peace as his popular Soviet counterpart.

At the Reykjavik summit in 1986, Gorbachev opened the encounter with a list of sweeping arms proposals that kept Ronald Reagan off balance for the rest of their time together. This time it was Bush who produced the printed sheet of specifics almost as soon as he and Gorbachev sat down in the book-lined cardroom of the Soviet cruise liner Maxim Gorky. Putting before him 112 typed pages of items, the President started out nervously, his voice tight. Gorbachev, sitting across from him, listened intently. When Bush finished speaking, nearly one hour later, he had set out what one White House official called "a lot of meat."

In fact much of it consisted of offerings that had been put forward elsewhere, but there were also some choicer cuts. The President reiterated his proposal that the two nations wrap up the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks in Geneva before the next summit -- which he suggested be held in Washington in June -- and sign an agreement to cut conventional forces in Europe by the end of 1990. Bush offered to end U.S. production of binary chemical weapons when other nations capable of producing chemical killers enter into an international convention banning them. That represents a change from the Administration's position that it would continue to produce a few binary weapons as a defense against outlaw states.

To help the hard-pressed Soviet economy, Bush promised to waive the Jackson- Vanik Amendment, which restricts U.S.-Soviet trade, as soon as the Supreme Soviet concludes legislation permitting free emigration. For the interim, he proposed that the two nations negotiate a new trade treaty in time for the June summit. He also vowed to support observer status for the Soviet Union at the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) talks, a move long sought by the Soviets to help integrate the U.S.S.R. into the world economic system.

The toughest part of the President's message concerned Central America. Bush told Gorbachev: If the Nicaraguan Sandinistas have told you they are not supplying weapons to El Salvador's rebels, they are misleading you. He warned the Soviet leader not to miscalculate how seriously Washington regarded the escalating violence in Latin America.

Gorbachev seemed a bit stunned that Bush's overall proposals were so detailed and specific, not to mention numerous. After sitting silent during most of the lengthy presentation, the Soviet leader looked the President in the eye and told him, "I have heard you say that you want perestroika to succeed, but frankly I didn't know this. Now I know. Now I have something tangible."

For weeks before the Malta meeting, White House aides -- and Bush himself -- had been putting a damper on expectations. But the President was determined all the while to arrive with proposals that would interest the Soviets and encourage the success of their reforms without turning the meeting into a wholesale renegotiation of the postwar order. Such a deal would be futile in any case. At Yalta in 1945 the victorious Allies could draw lines at will upon war-ravaged Europe. Now the ability of both superpowers to dictate events has been sharply circumscribed.

The pell-mell surge of events in Eastern Europe left Moscow to make a virtue of necessity, giving its blessing to an erosion of Communist power that it could do little to reverse in any case. Meanwhile, the U.S. is in no better position to impose its will on its robust NATO allies, especially a West Germany that has become the engine of change on the Continent, pouring the deutsche mark into Eastern Europe the way the dollar once flowed to the Western nations under the Marshall Plan. All through the summit the German question hung in the air, although the two leaders agreed to keep their public remarks on Eastern Europe to a minimum.

On Sunday, in the kind of head-spinning turn of events that is now the norm in the Soviet bloc, East Germany's Egon Krenz resigned as Communist Party leader -- while retaining his post as leader of the state -- and his entire Politburo and Central Committee stepped down as well. Asked about German unification at Sunday's press conference, Gorbachev said some questions must be left for "history" to decide and cautioned against doing "anything to accelerate these changes artificially." That call for prudence seemed ironic coming from the statesman who had done more than any other in this half of the century to speed up the process of history, including the transformation of Germany.

The evidence that Gorbachev's drive for democracy and openness is serious seemed to grow even as the problems of the Communist world worsened. En route to Malta, Gorbachev stopped in Rome to visit John Paul II. His momentous meeting with the Pope marked the beginning of the end of more than 70 years of antagonism between the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church. The first Soviet Communist Party boss to set foot on Vatican soil, Gorbachev conferred with the Pope for an unexpectedly long 75 minutes in the library of the 16th century Apostolic Palace. Addressing John Paul II as "Your Holiness" -- no small gesture for the leader of a nation and party formally pledged to atheism -- Gorbachev promised that the Supreme Soviet would "shortly" pass a law guaranteeing religious freedom for all believers.

Gorbachev also agreed to reopen diplomatic relations with the Vatican and discussed a possible papal visit to the Soviet Union sometime in the future. John Paul hedged on that, making his acceptance conditional upon some evidence of real improvement in the situation of Soviet Catholics. But the Pope did offer his endorsement of perestroika, all the while pressing home his "expectation" that Ukrainian Catholics would be allowed to exercise their faith fully and openly. The Ukrainian Church, which follows the Eastern liturgy but claims the Pope as its spiritual leader, was banned and driven underground by Stalin in 1946.

When the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV decided to seek the pardon of Pope Gregory VII in 1077, he stood barefoot for three days in the snow outside the papal quarters in Canossa, Italy. Gorbachev's concordat with the church was no less significant in its way. But there was a crucial difference: as is so often the case with Gorbachev, he achieved his reconciliation without humiliation. As he had done before, the Soviet leader let the ongoing crisis of the Communist system serve as an opportunity to push his nation toward a broader vision of the future. "We need spiritual values," Gorbachev declared the day before the Vatican meeting. "We need a revolution of the mind."

Gorbachev made those remarks in Rome's city hall, where the Treaty of Rome establishing the European Community was signed in 1957. Although 32 years late to the party, he once again proclaimed his support of a European "commonwealth of sovereign democratic states" and urged that a 35-nation Helsinki conference be convened next year to find solutions to "common European problems."

Before departing from Italy on Friday afternoon, Gorbachev also offered a revisionist view of the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia that crushed the reforms of the Prague Spring. Earlier that day, the new Politburo of the Czechoslovak Communist Party branded the invasion as wrong. Asked at a Milan press conference what he thought about that, Gorbachev tiptoed toward an apology, though without going all the way. The Prague Spring was "an acceptable movement for democracy, renewal and humanization of society," he said. "It was right then and is right now."

George Bush arrived in the Maltese capital of Valletta on Friday morning, looking tired after an all-night flight during which he was regularly kept apprised of the progress of the attempted coup in the Philippines. It was the President's brother William who first suggested the rocky island some 200 miles north of Libya as a site for the meeting, having visited last September. The idea for a shipboard summit, away from the mobs of reporters and aides, came from the President himself, a former Navy flyer who still likes to slam his speedboat through the water around his summer home in Kennebunkport, Me. The President may have regretted the lack of back-up sites soon after his arrival, when he met with Maltese Prime Minister Edward French Adami and President Vincent Tabone. Emerging from the meeting, Bush glanced through a window at what was by that time a lashing storm outside. "I believe it will clear up," he declared.

Bush later flew by helicopter to the U.S.S. Belknap, his headquarters for the summit and the planned site of Sunday's meetings. The 547-ft. guided- missile cruiser was anchored about 1,000 yds. offshore in Marsaxlokk Bay, an industrial basin on the southeast coast of Malta. U.S. Navy and Maltese patrol boats trying to circle the ship bounced crazily on waves that were already cresting at a wind-whipped 5 ft. to 7 ft. About 500 yds. away was the larger Soviet cruiser Slava, anchored nearer to the mouth of the harbor. At dockside was the Maxim Gorky, the 25,000-ton Soviet cruise ship housing the Soviet delegation.

Overnight the weather turned worse. A gale with winds of up to 60 m.p.h. slashed down the narrow alleys of the ancient port town. Pedestrians had to lean into the wind to avoid being blown over, and waves lashing the quay exploded into plumes of spray that flew 30 ft. into the air. Two tugboats were called out to keep the Slava from slipping its main anchor.

By Saturday morning the Soviets had decided to shift the day's opening meeting from the Slava to the heavier and more stable Gorky, where Gorbachev had spent the night. Traveling from the Belknap in a small launch, the President brought with him a group including Secretary of State James Baker, chief of staff John Sununu, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and top Baker aide Robert Zoellick. Among those with Gorbachev were Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, former Soviet Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Dobrynin and international-affairs adviser Alexander Yakovlev. As they entered the cardroom where the session would be held, an effervescent Bush swore that he had enjoyed a good night's sleep on the bouncing Belknap. "Piece of cake," he announced. (Later both he and Baker were spotted wearing medical seasickness patches behind their ears.) While Gorbachev joked about the rough weather, Bush nodded to the seas and said, "Calming down -- it's a good sign." Then he said, "Let's go to work."

As he ran down his inventory of offers, the President at first seemed nervous but began to sound more confident and relaxed, as he promoted everything from an international conference next year on global warming to an increased exchange of college students and a joint endorsement of the idea of holding the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin. Echoing a long-standing U.S. complaint about the Soviets, he urged them to publish information on their military-force structure, budget and weapons production. He handed Gorbachev a list of possibilities for cooperation between the two nations, including advice on such classically capitalist institutions as banking systems and a stock market. "We're happy to pursue any of these issues with you," Bush said, beaming.

Bush also gave Gorbachev a list of about 20 names of Soviet citizens who were seeking to emigrate. On Sunday Baker was to give Shevardnadze a list of 95 more names. At summits throughout the 1970s and much of the '80s, the U.S. regularly presented such lists to the Soviet side, commonly to no avail. This time Bush recognized that the Soviet Union has made "great strides" in resolving individual cases. "Let's set a goal," Bush suggested, "that by next year's summit we won't have another list to give you."

Bush's earnest presentation of his overall proposals had a weight to it that the Soviets acknowledged. Said an American aide who was at the table: "The President wanted to get the message across that he didn't just support perestroika; he wanted to back up his support." Gorbachev listened closely, nodding vigorously at times. His reply to the President's offers was warm, though mostly general. "Gorbachev completely caught the spirit," said a U.S. official. "There was nothing from which he dissented."

Amid the 16-ft. seas and gale-force winds that had pounded the island all day, Bush and his party returned to the Belknap Saturday afternoon, their launch rolling so heavily that it had to make several passes before it connected successfully with the American warship. Eventually the weather forced cancellation of the afternoon session and the joint dinner planned for that night. Bush was left stranded on the Belknap, looking helplessly over the short distance of rough water that separated him from Gorbachev, the man he had traveled thousands of miles to see.

Yet the smiles on Sunday -- and Gorbachev's thanks for the state of Soviet- American "joint enterprise" -- proved that Bush had achieved the basic purpose of his get-acquainted meeting. "He dumped it all on the table and made his point," said one of his aides. After months of taking criticism for dithering, the U.S. President had made it clear that he too intends to do business with Mikhail Gorbachev.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: SOURCE: DEFENSE BUDGET PROJECT (NATO ESTIMATES)/TIME CHART BY CYNTHIA DAVIS

CAPTION: FORCE LEVELS

The Soviet Union wants to reduce NATO and Warsaw Pact troops in Europe to 1.35 million for each side, with the Soviets and U.S. limited to 350,000 each. The U.S. says it has just 305,000 troops in Europe now. Bush has proposed that U.S. and Soviet forces be capped at 275,000 apiece. According to NATO, that would mean a reduction of 30,000 U.S. troops and 325,000 Soviet soldiers. At Malta, Bush called for resolving the differences by next year.

With reporting by Cathy Booth/Rome and Michael Duffy, Dan Goodgame and Christopher Ogden/Valletta