Diplomacy Holding Hands in Europe

By Michael S. Serrill

What on earth was half of the Reagan Administration, or what seemed like it, doing in Europe last week while Washington burned? There was Secretary of State George Shultz, arriving in London on the first leg of a five-day fence- mending trip. While in the British capital, he crossed paths with Attorney General Edwin Meese, who had come to urge a meeting of European Community interior ministers to stand tough against terrorism. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger had just been in Belgium shoring up U.S. arms-control positions with his NATO counterparts. And at week's end Shultz led a platoon of top officials, including Treasury Secretary James Baker, to Brussels to talk about some prickly economic issues.

All diplomatic eyes were on Shultz. The Secretary's agenda listed a variety of arms-control issues, but he was clearly there to hold European hands and soothe European fears about the stability of American foreign policy in the wake of the Iran-contra arms scandal. "I have a rebuilding job to do," he told reporters. Shultz, who has made his dissent from the Iran policy well known, had the unenviable task of persuading the allies that the investigations have not seriously hampered President Reagan's ability to manage U.S. foreign policy.

While sympathetic to Shultz's mission, European leaders were still indignant about "Iranscam" and skeptical that Reagan will be able to put the scandal quickly behind him. Just before Shultz arrived, a senior British official privately complained that he was "dismayed and disappointed" at the U.S.'s departure from its stated refusal to negotiate with terrorists. The conclusion that U.S. foreign policy will be affected, declared NATO Secretary- General Lord Carrington, should occur to "anybody who reads the newspapers about what is happening in Washington."

The crisis intensified Europe's growing feeling that it must join together to assert its strategic interests in superpower negotiations. Since the summit at Reykjavik, where the Europeans were horrified to see Reagan come close to abolishing their nuclear umbrella, calls for greater European security cooperation have been increasing. The most powerful statement came two weeks ago, when French Premier Jacques Chirac proposed a new European security agreement to ensure a strong nuclear deterrent on the Continent. In addition, since Reykjavik, European leaders have relied even more on their long-standing system of informal contacts among top aides to help formulate and coordinate policy options, especially in relation to U.S. moves.

Shultz tried to convince the Europeans that the U.S. will not abandon its nuclear shield over Western Europe, despite Reagan's controversial proposal in Reykjavik to eliminate all ballistic missiles over a ten-year period. Reiterating his statement of last month, he said at the annual meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels that even if agreement were reached to scrap most nuclear missiles "a small residual ballistic-missile force" would remain as "insurance" to guard against Soviet cheating. Shultz was also careful to discourage speculation that a politically weakened President might be hustled into a disadvantageous deal with the Soviets. Said he: "If they think there is an opening, they should get over it."

Indeed, if Western Europe needed a reminder of where its political interests lay, the Soviets have obliged in West Germany, where all 108 European-based nuclear-armed U.S. Pershing IIs and many cruise missiles are deployed. With campaigning for West Germany's national elections in January under way, Moscow has turned to vilifying Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who is expected to be re- elected to a four-year term, and his Christian Democratic Party. Less than six months after Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared that a "new page" was being turned in Soviet-West German relations, the Soviet press is denouncing the Kohl government as "revanchists" guilty of "Stone Age hostility against the Soviet Union" and condemning West Germany as "Washington's most important launching site in Western Europe."

The Americans, at least, considered the Shultz trip a success. Even though the NATO allies distanced themselves from Reagan's idea of eliminating all ballistic missiles, they "fully endorsed" U.S. aims to negotiate cuts of 50% and to get rid of medium-range missiles in Europe. Lord Carrington described / the meetings as "reassuring -- exactly what, at this juncture, was needed." His optimism echoed a sentiment expressed earlier by Margaret Thatcher after a European Community summit. It was her "great hope," she said, that "things will soon return to normal" in Washington. Most of her counterparts on the Continent could not agree more.

With reporting by Johanna McGeary and Christopher Redman/Brussels