European Diary, 1977-1981 (17 page)

The conference began with formal statements: Guiringaud for the host country, then Waldheim of the UN, then the two co-chairmen (MacEachen of Canada for the Group of Eight, or G8, and Pérez-Guerrero of Venezuela for the Group of Nineteen, or G19). Then, rather to our surprise, we discovered that the two chairmen wished to go further in the morning, and so David Owen and I both
spoke on behalf of the Community; rather flat speeches both of them I thought. Then I walked the one and a half miles or so to near the Rond Point for a slightly pointless lunch given by the Canadians. Then we had a strategy meeting of G8, in which MacEachen outlined his scheme for dividing into four Commissions for detailed negotiating, with about three representatives of our side facing about five of G19 across each table, and a rule that only heads of delegations should do the actual negotiating. This was a dangerous procedure so far as anyone's ability to keep overall control of the conference was concerned. However, it was a good and interesting experience to have to do for once the detailed negotiating which is normally done by officials. The Community was to be on three out of four groups, which meant that David Owen had to take one, I another and Cheysson the third. I did the so-called ‘Development' one, including Special Action, Indebtedness and Official Development Aid.

Then I saw the new Indian Foreign Minister for about half an hour. He talked little, but K. B. Lall, their extremely experienced Ambassador to the Community, talked a good deal and gave us fairly clear information that G19 were in a reasonably moderate mood and anxious for a tolerable outcome of the conference.

TUESDAY, 31 MAY.
Paris.

An early meeting of the G8 representatives on my negotiating group. It soon became clear that they were pretty useless. There was the Canadian Minister of Mines and Industry, Gillespie, who looked and indeed was a nice man, in appearance a curious cross between Giscard and Senator McGovern, but who appeared to know little about the subjects, and was fairly slow at picking them up. The third representative, the Swedish Foreign Minister, Mrs Karin Söder, was terrified. There had been a suggestion that she should be the moderator of the group, but she had backed away from this with enormous energy, and it was quite clear that I had to do it.

Lunch at the British Embassy, where there seemed to be some uneasy ambiguity as to whether Nicko or David Owen was host to about eight Foreign Ministers. Then back to the Kléber for a five-hour negotiating session of my group. My principal interlocutor
was Bouteflika, the Foreign Minister of Algeria, clever, reputedly difficult, but in my view quite engaging to deal with on a basis of reasonably good-tempered verbal sparring. There was also the Finance Minister of the Cameroons who negotiated a bit about agricultural aid, briefly, effectively and helpfully, and also a Pakistani gentleman who was a slight caricature of a Pakistani, began all statements with a very loud ‘Sir', and was also fortunately a tremendous literary snob, who claimed to have read all my books, and kept on saying he would not engage in stylistic arguments with such a distinguished author, etc. The negotiations were enjoyable and went rather well, but were exhausting as nobody else spoke from our side.

Then instead of going to Guiringaud's dinner at the Quai d'Orsay—I had had enough official meals and felt under no obligation to accept a French invitation—Michael and I gave dinner to the Hendersons in the very pretty ambience of the Grand Véfour looking out over the garden of the Palais Royal. Nicko told me that at a dinner the week before, Giscard had sent for him to pass on a message that he hoped that I had not taken personal offence over his behaviour in London. It was not his whim, it was French official policy, and what he had done was not much, if any, worse than Callaghan or Schmidt. This message neither greatly surprised nor excited me. On the whole I prefer that Giscard should take this view rather than the opposite one, but a half-apology in private after offence in public is, I fear, rather typical of him.

Back to the Kléber at 11.00. Gillespie was deeply involved in trying to negotiate the industrialization and transfer of technology passages and was without question making a good old cock-up of it, although it was a fairly complicated and unrewarding subject. I therefore stayed until we adjourned at 1 o'clock.

WEDNESDAY, 1 JUNE.
Paris and Brussels.

I had hoped to go to Brussels in the morning, but this became impossible. Gillespie had gone home to Canada after his not very good performance the night before and the Swedish lady was still incapable of speech. As the hours went on some progress, notably on the passage about Official Development Aid which, with great difficulty, we managed to get agreed. The Americans, by late in the afternoon,
were getting into what I thought was a rather ill-judged confrontation mood and Ryan, their principal operating man in my Commission (although mysteriously both Senator Javits and ex-Governor Gilligan of Ohio spent most of the time sitting in). Ryan kept coming up to me and saying, ‘Tell them if they won't accept this, the whole thing's off. We are withdrawing everything else we have agreed.' But I was certainly not prepared to go back on agreements which, apart from anything else, had been so laboriously hammered out, and firmly declined to go along with him.

As a result we managed by about 8 o'clock to complete the work, leaving a number of things disagreed, but with substantial accomplishment nonetheless. The rest of the conference was still grinding on, but I decided there was nothing more I could do and therefore rushed down to the Gare du Nord and just caught the 8.30 TEE. A nice journey across northern France on a perfect June evening.

THURSDAY, 2 JUNE.
Brussels.

Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia at 11.45, first for a short private talk, then for a formal Commission meeting, and then for lunch at Val Duchesse. Kaunda is a nice, honest and quite interesting man, certainly the best of the African heads of state that I have so far entertained at the Commission, although he harangued us unnecessarily aggressively about Rhodesia.

Dinner with Luns, the NATO Secretary-General, who was in his usual large canine mood. I was struck by how incomparably grander a house the Secretary-General of NATO has than the President of the Commission could possibly afford out of his allegedly so large salary. (The difference of course is that the NATO house is provided and staffed officially.) A male dinner: Haferkamp who arrived late and said practically nothing; Davignon who talked a good deal very sensibly; André de Staercke (famous Belgian ex-diplomat), whom I had not seen since Grimaud, behind St Tropez, in 1966; Pansa Cedronio, the Italian deputy Secretary-General; and Killick, the British Ambassador to NATO. Killick talked a good deal too much in his usual RASC colonel manner and ended up with a spirited defence of South Africa. Stevy Davignon carved him up over this, but at least the fact that he (Killick) did it showed a certain bloody-minded independence.

FRIDAY, 3 JUNE.
Brussels, Bonn and East Hendred.

Motored to Bonn to deliver the first in a series of German Marshall Fund Lectures to mark the thirtieth anniversary of Marshall's Harvard speech. An audience of about two hundred, a lot of ambassadors, a lot of Americans who had come over, Carstens,
¹²⁹
Dohnanyi and a moderately distinguished German gathering. I talked about enlargement and North/South relations. Plane from Düsseldorf to England.

MONDAY, 6 JUNE.
East Hendred.

To the Berlins'
¹³⁰
at Headington for a rather grand but highly enjoyable lunch party. Apart from the Berlins and us, the Beaumarchais', the Asa Briggs',
¹³¹
Arnold Goodman
¹³²
and Ann Fleming
¹³³
, Michael and Pam Hartwell,
¹³⁴
Nin Ryan
¹³⁵
and Joe Alsop.

WEDNESDAY, 8 JUNE.
Brussels.

Commission all day, but now working quite well and no immense difficulties. The main subject in the morning was Gundelach's attempt to impose Monetary Compensatory Amounts (MCAs) upon durum wheat (essential for pasta) which provoked a lot of Italian opposition, both Giolitti and Natali speaking with great passion. It was the first time Gundelach had failed to carry the Commission with him when he had been deploying an issue with full force directly within his own field. Following this his extremely
ingenious solution for the British pig problem went through, as Asquith would have said ‘on oiled castors' with merely a little grumble from Vredeling and one or two others, mainly because the Commission could not possibly turn Gundelach down on two agricultural issues running.

Anthony Lewis
¹³⁶
of the
New York Times
and Crispin and Hayden to an enjoyable lunch, rue de Praetère. After the Commission I saw Davignon for a general round-up, although his preoccupation was his complaints about the laziness of Haferkamp, fully justified but not for the moment at any rate leading to anything very much. Haferkamp is, I fear, without doubt a disappointment and I may have made a mistake in giving him the big external job, although I still do not see a better realistic alternative. Gundelach or Davignon would of course have been individually better, but this would have left the Germans without a major portfolio.

THURSDAY, 9 JUNE.
Brussels and Copenhagen.

Philippe Le Mâitre of
Le Monde
for half an hour to see if I could delicately improve relations with him and therefore
Le Monde's
reporting of the Commission, with which we could most certainly do.

To Copenhagen, where we were met on the tarmac by K. B. Andersen, the Foreign Minister, and pouring rain. Drove to the Hôtel d'Angleterre, a nice turn-of-the-century hotel, where I had rather magnificent rooms, though no luggage until after midnight owing to a cock-up, and did a little work there before going to the Prime Minister's dinner of about fifty. I sat between him (Anker Jorgensen) and K. B. Andersen. Jorgensen neither speaks nor understands English perfectly by any means; he is however an agreeable man with a great deal of sense, pro-Community, and with a strong position in the country; and as one gets to know him better it is not difficult to see why. Speeches, in English, about a quarter of an hour each; fortunately I managed to think up a
Hamlet
quotation to match his prepared one, but was quite unable to match his Hans Christian Andersen one.

FRIDAY, 10 JUNE.
Copenhagen and East Hendred.

A three-mile walk confirmed my view that Copenhagen is both agreeable and handsome. Then a short talk with Jorgensen alone, during which I told him of the plans for the Bonn Summit in the early months of 1978, i.e. during the Danish presidency, but added that I thought it likely that this would in fact have to be postponed because of the imminence of the French elections. I suggested that Jorgensen did not raise the issue of double Community representation, i.e. his possible presence as President of the European Council, as well as mine, for a few months, and he seemed to agree.

Following this there were two large meetings (both in length and size of attendance), the first with the Prime Minister in the chair, and the second under the Foreign Minister. We covered agriculture, with particular reference to MCAs, economic and monetary union, the Snake,
¹³⁷
Tripartite Conference, direct elections and the remote but delicate issue of Greenland's relations with the Community. The veteran (but not old) Per Haekkerup spoke remarkably well on a whole range of issues.

Then we drove about twenty miles to Fredensborg for the royal lunch with Queen Margrethe. Fredensborg is a large, quite impressive early eighteenth-century palace, with a park on one side, a small town very close to its gates on the other, slightly in this way like a very miniature Versailles. Lunch for about two dozen: the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister -1 drove out with Anker Jørgensen and drove back with K. B. Andersen—plus a few other politicians, also the Prince of Denmark (the Queen's young French Consort who was in the embassy in London) and Queen Ingrid. They had very decently asked to lunch all the people of my party, including my secretary.

I sat between the two Queens and got on fairly well with both of them. A perfect though remarkably different English from each of them; Queen Margrethe's more ‘educated', no doubt the result of Girton, and Queen Ingrid's more in a traditional upper-class English female mould. Rather curiously there was no politics, not even in the broadest European sense, at lunch, and the conversation
was purely social throughout, which was not wholly to the taste of the Danish politicians and a contrast with my visits with Queen Juliana, the King of the Belgians, or the Grand Duke of Luxembourg.

By the end of lunch there had been a remarkable change in the weather. A hazy sun had come out and it had become immensely hot and humid. My crowded press conference at the Community office in Copenhagen was one of the most drenching Turkish baths I had ever been in. Then another talk of nearly an hour and a half with K. B. Andersen. There was one point on which we could not get agreement. We wanted the Danes to hold up their ratification of the Baltic Convention in order that the Community should try and be a party to it. The Germans, who are also a party, are willing to do this, but not the Danes. I found it difficult to know whether my Commission brief was excessively legalistic or not. However, we managed to avoid this degenerating into a nasty argument, and finished up and parted with expressions of goodwill at about 6.30.

This Danish expedition was one of the best of the opening official visits to the capitals; both the two major ministers and several others were well worth talking to; difficulties were not glossed over, and high consideration for the Commission was shown by both the Danish State and the Danish Government.

SUNDAY, 12 JUNE.
East Hendred and London.