European Diary, 1977-1981 (81 page)

From the Quirinale to the Palazzo Chigi for a 1 o'clock meeting with Cossiga. Malfatti was also supposed to be there but had had another heart attack. As a result, Cossiga and I spent a long time alone, discussing what he should do about the Malfatti problem, I saying firmly that he must have a proper Foreign Minister to preside over the Council, that it couldn't be left to Zamberletti, the quite nice Under-Secretary. He agreed, said that he had to make a change and that he was sorry but Malfatti's health just wasn't up to it. Who, therefore, did I think he should appoint? There were two possibilities, Ruffini, the Defence Minister, and Pandolfi, the Finance Minister. Would it be a bad thing to move across the
Defence Minister? he curiously asked. Would it look too much as though it were a military appointment? I said, no, schematically there was absolutely no objection to this, though it was of course the case that Pandolfi was linguistically very good and well known and well respected in Community circles. I did not know Ruffini. So he said he would reflect on all this. I hope that he will go for Pandolfi.
⁴

Partly as a result of this friendly conversation, we were able, when joined by a few others, to clear our thoughts for the next stage of the Commission paper with considerable ease and in a very good atmosphere and to move into lunch at 2.30. On the British budgetary question Cossiga was moderately but not excessively optimistic. He said that the conversations with Ian Gilmour had not gone particularly well the week before because the Lord Privy Seal had had nothing he was able to say to them. I pointed out firmly that this was not his fault, as he had been given a very narrow negotiating brief, but the Italians definitely left me with the impression that they thought it had been a great mistake to undertake this mission without giving it any authority to negotiate on a figure below the 1500 million units of account which the British were still demanding.

The best Cossiga and I could do was to agree that we would work hard on method, that it was very difficult to say that an early Summit would be worthwhile, though it was too early definitely to rule it out, and that we should be in close touch again at the end of the month after his visit to Mrs Thatcher in London and my visit to Schmidt in Bonn. A useful, agreeable meeting. Plane from Fiumicino and home to rue de Praetère exactly twelve hours after I had left.

SUNDAY, 13 JANUARY.
Brussels.

Took George and Hilda Canning
⁵
to Tervuren and, for the first time, to the Musée d'Afrique Noire. On the Saturday we had taken them to Waterloo, where Jennifer and I had climbed up the Mound in bitter, sparkling weather. In the late afternoon we went to Malines
and found the cathedral more splendid than I had remembered. It was helped by a brilliant winter sunset. Dinner at home alone with the Cannings. George and I had quite a serious political conversation at the end, in which he assured me, without pressing which was good and nice of him, that he would support me in anything I did in the way of a radical centre party, etc. Quite a commitment for him to enter into, particularly as one knows how solid he is when he has said something.

MONDAY, 14 JANUARY.
Brussels.

I saw Ian Gilmour for half an hour. I hinted to him that the Italian visit hadn't gone very well and discussed how one should handle things in the future. Afterwards I saw Tom Enders, the new United States Ambassador, an impressive, self-confident, over-tall Yale man, who I think is probably very good. In the afternoon I saw Dick Cooper, one of Carter's two envoys, Warren Christopher being the other, with the general US briefing about what they wanted us to do on Iran, Afghanistan, etc. I just listened.

A short late working dinner at home for the Italians, Ruffini, Zamberletti, Plaja, etc. It was rather a remarkable feat on Ruffini's part to have arrived at all, considering (i) that he had only been appointed, unexpectedly he told me, that morning, (ii) that he had to stay in Rome in order to meet Warren Christopher (who had only arrived at about 5.30) and see him at the airport. However, although I was impressed by his coming, he didn't quite seem to know whether he was on his head or his feet and while no doubt his knowledge of NATO matters, and, I daresay, Italian internal politics is good, his knowledge of Community affairs is distinctly sketchy. He also seems to me to show signs of being a rather stubborn man, but perhaps that is not a bad thing in an Italian. More serious is the fact that, alas, he speaks no word of English or French. He does not understand even the simplest French phrases.

TUESDAY, 15 JANUARY.
Brussels and Strasbourg.

Foreign Affairs Council all day until 7.30. Ruffini not surprisingly a somewhat uncertain President. At the Council lunch I had more or less to preside. There was a long wrangle about a communiqué on Afghanistan. The French were very stubbornly for the
status quo
on
agricultural exports to Russia, or even worse than the
status quo,
and the British tried much too hard to get a long-term change of commercial policy through, i.e. end of sales of subsidized butter to Russia (which they have always wanted) under the shadow of a particular political situation. However, eventually, after an adjournment and the solvent of boredom, a text emerged. Although at one stage there had been eight to one against the French and in favour of a harder line, they managed, by their usual combination of stubbornness and a certain degree of skill—plus the weakness of the others—to get the British into an equally isolated position by the end. Ruffini was a better chairman during the afternoon. Then to Strasbourg by an incompetent avion taxi which wasted two hours.

WEDNESDAY, 16 JANUARY.
Strasbourg.

A meeting with Mme Veil at 12.15 and then lunch with her for Ruffini and Zamberletti. She had procured an interpreter for Ruffini but one who could only do French into Italian and, as he added rather pointlessly when we arrived, into German—but not English. However, it didn't matter because Mme Veil talked nearly all the time and at such a rate that there was no time for the interpreter, poor Ruffini hardly understood a word that was going on and the conversation passed between her (rattling along) and Zamberletti and me (both limping behind). Not a very pointful occasion.

Just before sunset I went for a forty-minute walk in the Orangerie with Nick Stuart. It was, I think, the coldest walk that I have ever had on this side of the Atlantic. We walked very fast and heavily clad round the frozen park, on a beautiful day (as all this period of weather has been), with the setting sun a great red ball glowing through the frost, but I was still agonizingly cold at the end, and had the impression that my clothes were disintegrating almost in the way that I experienced in Chicago ten years ago. The temperature was about 20°F, which is extremely low for the middle of the afternoon in Western Europe.

Dinner after a Commission meeting with the Fred Warners and the Frank Giles'.
⁶
Frank rather shocked by some of my remarks about Giscard.

THURSDAY, 17 JANUARY.
Strasbourg and Brussels.

Took Pieter Dankert,
⁷
the
rapporteur
of the Budget Committee, to lunch. I found him as I expected an able and impressive man, and certainly a remarkably good linguist. Yet, at the same time, I had the impression that there is some fault which may account for the fact that he has not achieved more in Dutch politics, and that – not that this is a bar to achievement in politics—he may not be as nice as he is able. We talked a little about the future Commission, and he told me the most extraordinary story: that Bernard-Reymond had been in Strasbourg canvassing the claims of Cheysson to be President. As the French spend most of their time putting in complaints to me about Cheysson's statements, this seems very odd indeed, even on the unlikely assumption that the French have any remote claim to the presidency. It must be some sort of ploy, I think. Then back to Brussels in the little
avion de ligne.

FRIDAY, 18 JANUARY.
Brussels and New York.

1 p.m. Sabena plane to New York.

At 8.30 I went with Marietta Tree to a most extraordinary dinner at a restaurant called Le Cirque given by a rich Texan wife, for about fifty people, most of whom she did not know, and in honour of the Kissingers, whom she had asked to choose the guest list. This turned out a remarkable, and in some ways uneasy, mixture of New York grand society and café society and one or two who belonged to neither. Her husband had unfortunately disappeared into hospital three or four days before, but she, an extremely bouncy lady of about forty, carried on with tremendous aplomb, even making a slightly contrived but by no means bad speech.

The
mise-en-scène
was that of a 1940s film, with three violinists playing throughout and a feeling that Adolphe Menjou should be the head waiter. Then suddenly the three turned into two who advanced up the room, doing a serenade to Kissinger, and I realized—though it took a moment or two to do so—that they weren't two of the three hired performers but were Isaac Stern and Zubin Mehta. Afterwards Stern made Mehta do an extraordinary
double-talk act with him, in which he said, ‘Now I will make a little speech in which I shall start each sentence and my friend will have to finish it. Then he will start the next one and I'll finish that.' Mehta looked slightly apprehensive about this, but in fact did it extremely well: Stern did it brilliantly, and the whole thing was an extraordinary
tour de force
for about five to seven minutes.

I sat between Mrs Mehta and Happy (or Unhappy as she is now known, I fear) Rockefeller, with Kissinger on the other side of Mrs Mehta. A lot of people of some note present–Javits
⁸
inevitably. Jack McCloy
⁹
- I cannot really think who altogether. Baddish speeches, including a rather indifferent one from Henry, but not as bad as those a (to me) unknown Senator and an unknown Congressman had made earlier. The hostess's was well above the average, even including her extraordinary act of saying, ‘Now we have got Henry's book, which is the greatest book for a very long time, but not perhaps as great as the Bible, therefore, I am opening the Bible on this higher stand and opening Henry's book on the other stand a few inches below it.'

SUNDAY, 20 JANUARY.
New York.

At Marietta's large dinner party there was a bizarre interchange between Sam Spiegel
¹⁰
and Nicko Henderson, neither knowing who the other was, but neither being able to understand that they didn't know someone as notable as the other obviously was. It all arose over a discussion of the Christmas holidays, when Heath had somewhat surprisingly spent two weeks more or less alone with Sam Spiegel in the West Indies. Nicko couldn't think who this man was with whom Heath had spent such a long time; and Spiegel couldn't think who this man Henderson was who knew Heath so relatively well.

MONDAY, 21 JANUARY.
New York.

To the vast, dismal Hilton for my dinner with the Economic Club of New York, which I had last addressed ten years previously. As is
their habit, it was a double billing, with Reuben Askew, ex-Governor of Florida, Robert Strauss's replacement as Special Trade Commissioner. I greeted the occasion with foreboding, having been told by some rather foolish man the previous evening that it was a useless audience (which was contrary to my previous recollection) and the only thing to do with them was—as apparently old Lord Thomson (Roy not George) and done several years ago—to tell them an endless series of rather
risqué
stories, which was not my intention, desire, or capability.

In fact it turned out a very good occasion: an audience of nearly a thousand and I made quite a brisk speech, with even some oratorical flourishes. We then had a good question session, including one about what were my intentions in relation to a centre party in British politics. I recalled Al Smith's 1924 riposte, which was at least appropriate in New York, when he got off the Twentieth Century Limited from Chicago, was prematurely asked whether he was a candidate (for President) and said, ‘I have not yet reached a decision upon that grave matter. But even had I done so I think it extremely unlikely I would wish to communicate it to the nation, through you, from this railroad platform.'

TUESDAY, 22 JANUARY.
New York and Washington.

Nine o'clock shuttle to Washington. At 11.00 a curious meeting with Brzezinski and Vance jointly, in Brzezinski's White House office. It was never clear who was in charge.

Then, at 11.30, a three-quarters-of-an-hour meeting with Carter. I saw him first in the Oval Office alone and had the normal agreeable conversation and photographs, and then had a rather good exchange with perhaps a total of fourteen people round the table, fairly evenly balanced conversation and not difficult. He was looking on much better form than when I had last seen him in Tokyo at the end of June, but this is not surprising as that was a very low period for him, and this is an up period after his crushing defeat of Teddy Kennedy in the Iowa primary.

I then went to the State Department in Vance's car and had a half-hour's meeting with him, followed by a two-hour luncheon. The meeting was better than routine, partly because we completely floored him over sanctions against Iran. In a polite way I told him
why I was sceptical about them and found to my surprise (it's a bad thing that the US State Department should think things out so incompletely) that he had no real answers, and not much conviction either. Over lunch we ran through a range of issues -Yugoslavia, Turkey, China. It was better than previous meetings at the State Department, because we had more to talk to them about and it was in no sense a contrived agenda.

At 3.15, I saw the Secretary of Commerce (Klutznick) who Carter told me would explain the exact US position about the restriction on the export of high technology to Russia, but discovered they were still in a totally confused state about this.