President Reagan addresses the nation in about three hours to explain what happened during his meetings this weekend with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The meetings did not produce any arms control agreements, nor did they produce a date for another summit between the two leaders. America's NATO allies were disappointed at the lack of an agreement, especially the failure to rid Europe of medium-range US and Soviet missiles. But they urged the two Superpowers to keep talking. And British Foreign Office Minister Timothy Renton said he was surprised that the two leaders had made as much progress as they did, and said he didn't agree that the meetings had ended in failure. "I would regard what has happened in Iceland as by no manner of means the end of the play, but rather as one act in this extremely important, in this extremely important series of discussions. There is now an interval between the acts. We hope that it will be a short interval and that the parties involved will resume and take up the next act very quickly." The next act will likely be in Geneva where Renton said he presumes that the material introduced in Iceland will be worked on and developed.
Some seventy thousand government workers in San Salvador returned to their jobs today just three days after an earthquake hit the city. El Salvador's President Jose Napoleon Duarte said nearly nine hundred people were killed in the quake and more than two hundred thousand left homeless. Duarte ordered civil servants back to work, although he said almost all public buildings suffered some kind of damage. Duarte estimates the earthquake caused two billion dollars worth of damage.
Damage is expected to total into the tens of millions of dollars after several days of flooding in south central Alaska. But it's believed no one has been hurt. Tim Wolston, of member station KSKA in Anchorage reports. "As many as fifteen homes have been destroyed and hundreds more damaged in the town of Seward, southeast of Anchorage. The main road leading into Seward has been washed away, cutting off the town from outside. Mayor Harry Giesler says hundreds have been evacuated; others prefer to wait it out. 'You know, Alaskans are a very hearty bunch, and especially people that have things like dog teams and animals. They are very, very reluctant to leave their home as long as it's even there.' Rain is forecast to continue for at least another day in Seward. Meanwhile, north of Anchorage, two bridges have been washed away, and the Alaska Railroad, a major form of transportation between Anchorage and Fairbanks has been cut off, making it very difficult for residents in interior Alaska to get to Five. The governor has issued disaster declarations to free up state fund for emergency relief. The state is hoping for federal assistance as well. For National Public Radio, this is Tim Wolston in Anchorage, Alaska."
Today was a day for sorting out the summit in Iceland. How did it happen that the two most powerful men of earth stepped to the threshold of a dramatic arms control accord and then stepped back? The talks foundered on the President's Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI.
"While both sides seek reduction in the number of nuclear missiles and war heads threatening the world, the Soviet Union insisted that we sign an agreement that would deny to me and to future presidents for ten years the right to develop, test, and deploy a defense against nuclear missiles for the people of the free world. This we could not and will not do."
"The President insisted, until the end, on retaining for the United States the right to test, to have experiments and to test things relating to SDI not only in the laboratories but also out of laboratories, including in space. So who was going to accept that? It would have taken a madman to accept that."
The translated remarks yesterday by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and remarks by President Reagan. We'll hear defenders and critics of SDI later in tonight's program, but first NPR's Jim Angle, just back from Iceland, joins us to discuss what the two leaders almost achieved.
"It is really amazing when you look at what the two Superpowers were able to do really in a period of twenty-four hours beginning with the experts meetings on Saturday night. In that twenty-four-hour-period, the two sides agreed to the most sweeping arms control proposals in the history of negotiations between the US and the Soviet Union. They agreed to fifty percent cuts in all offensive weapons, all offensive strategic weapons over five years, then went beyond that later on, in a proposal from President Reagan, to eliminate all offensive ballistic missiles at the end of a ten-year period. They also agreed on INF, or intermediate-range nuclear weapons, which are now both in Europe and in Asia. In the Soviet case, they agreed to eliminate all intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe and to reduce those in Asia by eighty-five percent to one hundred warheads, leaving the US with one hundred warheads as well. These were the kind of cuts in nuclear weapons that no one anticipated when they came to Iceland. At first the US did not expect the negotiations to be that detailed, nor did anyone anticipate that two sides would actually start moving that quickly on something that they had been talking about for so long and been unable to do."
"Tell us more about what the mood was like in Hofdi House during the negotiations."
"The arms control experts met all night. They began at 8 p.m., quit at 6:30 the next morning. The two leaders were briefed by their respective groups somewhere around 9 o'clock that morning and began meeting again at 10. Then they started moving very quickly on the negotiations. The Soviets came back, for instance, and quickly resolved the medium-range missiles issue after some argument for quite a while. At this point, the negotiators, the advisors on the US side, some of them said that what was happening was really breathtaking because they were beginning to sense that these things were falling together, that there was this enormous movement between the two sides, movement in both their positions, that no one had anticipated when they arrived in Iceland. At that point, even President Reagan apparently asked some of his advisors whether or not they were moving too fast, whether or not they were going too far. And they would re-examine positions to make sure that things weren't moving so quickly that they didn't realize the implications of what they were doing. In fact, one advisor said on one particular issue President Reagan said, 'No. That is too far. We will not go with that opposition.' At the very end, the advisors did not know what was happening; in fact at one point, when the first meeting broke up on Sunday—it was supposed to be the last meeting—they were out in the motorcade in the cars until they found out President Reagan had told the media that they were meeting again. They got out of cars, went back into Hofdi House. At the very end, they did not know what was happening in the talks. They got word that the two leaders were finished, that they were going out of the building. They went down the stairs, looked over the stairwell, had no idea at this point what the result of the discussions had been. And then officials in the back asked one official in the front who could see the two leaders, 'What did their faces look like?' That official said, 'They're not smiling.' And at that point, they knew that nothing had been agreed to and they had come so close to such a major agreement and they had failed."
"Well, everything fell apart at the last meeting because of the Strategic Defensive Initiative. What were the points of disagreement?"
"Well, there were basically two. The Soviets wanted to restrict SDI work to the laboratory which the US says is a more restrictive interpretation of the ABM Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missiles Treaty, than anyone has ever proposed. Also that at the end of ten years, the Soviets wanted to begin discussions about deployment; the Americans wanted, insisted that they had the right to deploy at the end of ten years. Throughout three drafts of language on this, the Soviets continued to insist on limiting SDI to the laboratory; the Americans hoped that they would eventually drop it, as they do sometimes in negotiations. But they did not. The interesting thing here is that the Soviets had sweetened the deal to such an extent, had laid out this amazing agreement between the two, that the two powers had come so close to this major agreement that this was, they hoped, the bait that would get President Reagan to adopt what people in the United States have called 'the grand compromise', which was to trade SDI for deproductions in offensive missies. At the end, the President rejected that. And American official think that they have not lost that deal. And the question now is what will happen next. What will US and the US and the Soviet Union agree to or fail to agree to in the Geneva arms talks?"
"OK. Thank you. NPR's Jim Angle."
For the next ninety minutes we will be questioning the candidates for president of the United States, following a format designed and agreed to by representatives of the two candidates. The candidates are Vice-President George Bush, the Republican nominee, Governor Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee.
Our questions this evening will be about equally divided between foreign and domestic policy matters. The first question by agreement between the two candidates goes to Vice-president Bush. It is a domestic question. You have two minutes for an answer, Sir.
The polls say the number one domestic issue to majority of voters is drugs. What is there about these times that drives or draws so many Americans to use drugs?
"I think we've seen a deterioration of values. I think for a while as a nation we condoned those, those things we should have condemned for a while, as I recall, it even seems to me that there was talk of legalizing, eh, or decriminalizing, eh, marijuana and other drugs. And I think that's all wrong. So we've seen a deterioration in values. And one of the things that I think we should do about it, in terms of cause, is to instill values into the young people in our schools. We've got away. We've got this feeling that the value-free education was a thing. And I don't believe it at all. I do believe there are fundamental rights and wrongs as far as youth. And of course, as far as the ... how we make it better. Yes, we can do better on interdiction. But we've got to do a lot better on inter-... and we've got to do a lot better on education. And we have to do ... be tougher on those who commit crimes. We've got to get after the users more. We have to change this whole culture. You know, I saw a movie, Crocodile Dundee . And I saw the cocaine scene treated with humor, as though this was a humorous little incident. It's bad. Everybody ought to be in this thing, entertainment industry, people involved in the school's education. And it isn't a Republican or a Democrat or liberal problem. But we have got to instill values in these young people. And ... ah, I have put forward a ... many point drug program the includes what I would do as president of the United States in Terms of doing better on interdiction, in terms of doing better in the neighborhoods. But I think we are all in this together. And my plead to the American people is values in the schools."
Governor, you have one minute to respond.
"I agree with Mr. Bush that values are important. But it's important that our leaders demonstrate those values form the top. That means those of us who are elected to positions of political leadership have to reflect those values ourselves. Here we are with a government that's been dealing with the drug running petty dictator. We've been dealing with him. He's been dealing drugs to our kids. Governors like me and others have been trying to do with the consequences. I remember being in a high school in my own state as we were organizing something we called 'the Governors' Alliance against Drugs', and a young sixteen-year-old girl coming up to me, desperate, addicted, dependent, saying, 'Governor, I need help,' We are providing that young woman with help. But I want to be a President of the United States who makes sure that we never again do business with the drug running petty dictator, that we never again funnel aid to the 'contras' and the convicted drug dealers. Values begin at the top, in the White House. Those are the values I want to be ... bring to Presidency and White House beginning January 1989."
Governor, a follow-up question. You have two minutes to answer it. Are you suggesting, sir, that President Reagan is one of causes of the drug problem in this country?
"I'm saying that those of us who are elected to the position of political leadership, Jim, have a special responsibility, not only to come up with programs and I have outlined and detailed a very important, very strong program of enforcement as well as drug education of prevention. And Mr. Bush is right. The two go hand in hand. But if our government itself is doing business itself with people who, we know, are engaged in drug profiteering an drug trafficking, if we don't understand that that sends out a very, very bad message to our young people, and it's a little difficult for me to understand just how we can reach out to that youngster that I talked about and young people like her all over the country and say to them, 'We want to help you."
"Now, I've outlined in great detail a program for being tough on enforcement home and abroad, doubling the number of drug enforcement agents, having a hemisphere's summit. Soon after the twentieth of January, we'll bring out democratic neighbors and allies together here in this hemisphere and go to work together. We also have to take demands seriously. You know we have 5% of the world's population in this country. We're consuming 50% of the world's cocaine. And in my state, I'm proud to say we've organized a drug education prevention program which the Federal drug enforcement administration says is a model of the country. We are helping youngsters. We're reaching out to them. And we're beginning drug education, prevention, beginning in the early elementary grades and every elementary school in ... eh ... in our ... eh ... our state. And that's the kind of help we need in every elementary school in the United States of America. And we've got to begin early in the first, second and third grade before our youngsters begin to experiment with these very, very dangerous substances. I guess the question I would ask of Mr. Bush is, how we instill those values? How we create this environment for the drug-free schools that we want of this country? If he or representatives of the administration...ah...are either dealing with and involving people like Noriega in our foreign policy, or don't pursue that connection in a way that makes it possible for us to cut it off and to be an example to our kids all over this country."
A minute to ... eh ... rebut, Mr. Vice-President.
"On the other day my opponent was given a briefing by the CIA. I asked for and received the same briefing. I'm very careful in public life about dealing with classified information. And what I'm about to say is unclassified. Seven administrations are dealing with Mr. Noriega. It was the Reagan-Buch Administration that brought this man to justice. And as the governor of Massachusetts knows there was no evidence that governor ... that ... that eh ... Mr. Noriega was involved in drugs, no hard evidence until we indicted him. And so I think it's about time we get this Noriega matter in perspective. Panama is a friendly country. I went down there and talked to the President of Panama about cleaning up their mon... money laundering. And Mr. Noriega was there. But there was no evidence at that time. And when the evidence was there, we indicted him and we want to bring him to justice and so call up for those pickets-up there that are trying to tear down seven different administrations." |