Nation/World
University Daily Kansan / Monday, February 12, 1990
7
U.S. to help Romania
$80 million food plan offered
The Associated Press
BUCHAREST, Romania — U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III offered Romania $80 million in food aid on a brief visit to Bucharest yesterday morning.
and on a other visit to the country's interim leaders that the United States expected continued movement toward democracy.
"We want to do our part to assist the transition to political pluralism and a free market economy." Baker said after meeting with interim President Ion Iliescu and Premier Petre Roman.
Premier Petre Roman.
Baker is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Romania since December's revolution, which topped Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu.
His visit came amid controversy surrounding the new Provisional Council of National Unity, which will run the
country until elections on May 20 and includes opposition parties for the first time.
Many of the 18 party leaders who met Baker said they told him that the old National Salvation Front Council, which took power during the revolution, had kept its grip on power in the new council. Several leaders said the Front was a guise for the old Communist Party.
Baker said he told Hiecu and Roman that "the betterment of relations of the United States with Romania will depend on fully free, fair elections and the respect for human rights and the rights of minorities."[7]
A State Department official said the assistance would include 500,000 metric tons of feed grain and 7,500 tons of butter.
Baker said Romanian officials assured him they were committed to free and fair elections.
Soviets to withdraw troops in Eastern Europe cutback
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — The Soviet Union yesterday offered to negotiate the withdrawal of its troops from Poland as part of an overall cutback of the Soviet military presence in Eastern Europe.
It also said it was ready to begin reducing its troop strength in the Eastern Bloc without waiting for a treaty to be signed.
In a government statement published by the official Tass news agency, the Kremlin declared that
the Cold War had ended and it was time to begin the gradual dismantling of the outdated model of the European balance of forces.
Superpower talks on cutting conventional armies in Europe have accelerated as Communist regimes have collapsed in East bloc countries.
"In this situation, it is important not to miss the historic chance and to supplement political detente by a relaxing of tension in the military field in good time," thegov-
ernment statement said.
"If the government of the Republic of Poland expresses an appropriate desire, we could discuss with its representatives the question of Soviet troops in that country," the Kremlin said.
After the visit of Secretary of State James A. Baker III to Moscow last week, Gorbachev suggested the limit of 225,000 be extended to Europe as a whole.
NATO may include all of reunified Germany
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner suggested yesterday after talks with President Bush that a reunified Germany could be a part of the Western alliance without extending NATO's military reach into the territory that is now East Germany.
East Germany.
Woerner said a way could and would be found to keep a united Germany in NATO while recognizing the security interests of the Soviet Union.
After two days of talks at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., both Bush and Woerner hailed West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl's talks with Soviet leaders in Moscow as "extraordinarily successful."
Kohl said Saturday that he got assurances from Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that Moscow would respect the right of the two Germans to decide for themselves the timing and structure of their reunification.
U. S., SOVIETS TALK TRADE: Top trade negotiators from the Soviet Union and the United States will meet today in an effort to begin dismantling the barriers that have prevented normal trade relations between the two superpowers for nearly a half-century.
U. S. Trade Representative Carla Hills and Deputy Trade Representative Julius Katz will meet with a Soviet delegation led by Yuriy N. Chumakov, deputy minister of foreign economic relations.
Both sides are working under a tight deadline to complete a wide-ranging agreement before the June summit meeting between President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail
Nation/World briefs
Gorbachev.
GALILEO BACK ON TRACK: The Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft took more photographs of Venus yesterday after engineers fixed computer commands that earlier made the camera shutter snap wildly, a NASA official said.
Galileo is flying toward Earth so the planet can act as a gravity slingshot Dec. 8 and send the spacecraft toward Jupiter. Galileo is
"There's no repeat of the incident yesterday morning, no problems," said Bob MacMillin, spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
scheduled to reach Jupiter in 1995 as part of a $1.35 billion mission to explore the solar system's largest planet.
CHENEY SHORTT VISIT:
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney yesterday sliced off one day of a scheduled visit next week to the Philippines after President Corazon Aquino said she would not meet with him.
"He doesn't take it personally. We're still going to the Philippines and we expect productive meetings," Pete Williams, Cheney's spokesman, said yesterday.
refuse to meet with him. She also expressed unhappiness about negative reports in the U.S. media about the efficacy of her government in light of a series of coup attempts.
VIOLENCE IN BEIRUT: Rival Christian forces battled in Beirut's rainstretched alleys and mountains northeast of the capital yesterday, while civilians dodged bullets trying to reach the Muslim sector and buy goods for their trapped families.
say yesterday.
A week before Cheney's first visit to her nation as defense secretary, Aquino announced that she would
Police said at least eight people were killed and 17 wounded in the latest violence. Since the fighting broke out Jan. 30, at least 457 people have died.
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