Hart Meeting European Leaders but Denies He’s on Political Trip

Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado laughed at the question that came up at a cocktail party in a fellow Democrat’s apartment here.

“No,” he replied, “I’m not running for anything in Europe, including for an American office, not at all. I don’t think an American political figure traveling over here ought to be suspected all the time of doing something political.”

That suspicion, however, was rife here as the senator, meeting political leaders and making speeches on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, stopped in Paris as part of a European tour that will take him to Moscow today for four days of discussions.

The Paris newspaper Le Monde described the trip as part of Hart’s campaign for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination.

During his official visit to the United States last March, French President Francois Mitterrand, who has the reputation of being an insatiably curious intellectual, arranged to meet Hart. On Tuesday, Hart met for 45 minutes with Mitterrand at the Elysee Palace.

As he left the president’s offices, the senator was surrounded by photographers. “President Mitterrand is one of the most impressive world leaders I have ever met,” Hart said. “We get along very well, I think.”

Soon after he arrived in Paris from London on Tuesday, Hart spoke to a seminar of the French Institute of Foreign Relations, repeating many of the suggestions that he had made earlier in Britain for reform of NATO.

“If our citizens,” Hart told the seminar, “believe the risk of war, especially nuclear war, is growing, and that NATO policies are contributing to that growth, they will begin to look for alternatives to NATO.”

Arguing that NATO defense cannot be improved by simply spending more money, Hart proposed increasing the cohesion of units by trying to reduce the turnover of personnel, developing strategy and tactics based on maneuver rather than on superior firepower and depending on weapons that are small, simple and rugged instead of extremely technological weapons that are expensive and ineffective.

“Change is not a danger,” he said. “The only danger is freezing NATO in a rigid mold as the world changes around it.”

Although France does not participate in the military aspects of NATO, many French in the audience were skeptical of Hart’s proposals and showed their skepticism in close questioning of the senator. The institute represents the foreign policy Establishment of France, and that Establishment tends to be conservative on East-West issues.