First year in office had galvanizing effect on George Bush approval rating in Europe. December poll showed he was up 39 points in France (from 37 to 76 per cent approval), 24 points in West Germany (52 to 76), 23 points in Britain (45 to 68), and 17 points in Italy (63 to 80). … At year’s end all four European nations agreed NATO continued to be essential: by 77 per cent in Britain, 67 per cent in West Germany, and 62 per cent in France and Italy. . . . Year-end NBC/WSJ poll found Margaret Thatcher more popular with Americans than Mikhail Gorbachev, 66 to 54 per cent, while Daniel Ortega piled up a 68 to 5 per cent negative to positive rating. . . . Soviet authorities informed British Labour leader Neil Kinnock that Gorbachev would not be able to see him in Moscow in mid-January because of press of domestic affairs. Two days later, Radio Moscow announced that Gorbachev would see UN Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuellar and former Japanese Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe in January. . . . Jimmy Carter’s former NSC advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski urged Poles and Czechs to form a federation to protect themselves from Soviet Union and a reunited Germany. . . . Among first reforms in Rumania: abolition of death penalty, freedom to travel, freedom to lodge foreign guests in private homes, and a forty-hour work week (replacing Rumania’s six-day plus work week). . . . East Germans will hereafter be able to hang glide, a practice heretofore banned for fear they’d hang glide to freedom. . . . Get this: the United Nations has forbidden the U.S. Mission in New York to sponsor a concert of Baltic music, played by Americans of Baltic descent—unless the Soviet Union okays the concert.
Christian Science Monitor columnist John Hughes points out there hasn’t been a single anti-gringo public demonstration in Latin America in fortnight following Panama invasion, and questions whether the people of Latin America share their leaders’ outrage. . . . Incidentally, most Central American states abstained in that 20 to 1 OAS vote condemning U.S. on Panama. Not voting: Costa Rica, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Antigua and Barbuda, and Venezuela.
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