White House Diaries

Monday, June 8, 1987

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Get away day—breakfast at 7:45 A.M. then up & going. I left at 10 A.M. for the Cipriani Hotel on one of the small islands of Venice—our home for the next 5 days. Nancy left at 10:15 for Stockholm—another program in the anti-drug crusade. She’ll rejoin me on Wed. This was a busy day. We helicoptered to an Italian naval station then took a boat to the hotel—many official greeters along the way. Arriving at the hotel a little before 11 A.M. then to a room for briefing on bi-lateral with P.M. Fanfani & his team.

Met P.M. at 11:30—a good meeting largely devoted to farming & the need to do something about subsidies which are causing world wide over production.

That meeting over—a working lunch with our whole gang.

Then a briefing for meeting with Chancellor of W.G. Helmut Kohl. Once again farming but also ec. matters were on the agenda as well as talk about doing away with nuc. weapons.

I had a phone call from P.M. Mulroney—Canada about taking some action on S. Africa. I urged him to hold off until after Margaret Thatchers election Thurs.

Finally my meeting with old friend Yasu Nakasone P.M. of Japan. I was able to tell him of a partial lifting of the sanctions imposed because of the transistor dumping by some of their companies. They’ve made some improvement so we lifted $51 mil. of the $300 mil. in tariffs. This was made public at 4 P.M.

Then shower time & at 6:25 P.M. on the boarding dock for the official Summit greeting at the Palazzo Ducale. Includes review of troops—Nat. Anthems etc. Then a reception & at 7:15 return to Hotel Cipriani for a half hour breather before going to Prefettura by boat again for opening dinner. We travel on motor launches manned by U.S. Navy men & officers. The building where the reception was held is one of those magnificent structures that couldn’t be duplicated today. There are no craftsmen who could do the work.

The dinner lasted til midnight mainly because Margaret & Helmut did battle over whether to go zero on the very short range & tactical nuc. weapons. She says no & I had to differ with her although I explained it shouldn’t happen until after we had negotiated an end to chemical weapons & reduced conventionals.

For a while it looked as if they were going to try to settle the whole summit in this one evening.—Bed at last.