Reagans Attend First of Three State Dinners

With the controversial Bitburg cemetery ceremony behind them, President Reagan and his wife, Nancy, on Sunday night attended the first of three state dinners being held in their honor during their last six days in Europe.

The mood at the white-tie dinner, given by West German President Richard von Weizsaecker, was very upbeat. Helmut Schlesinger, the deputy president of the Bundesbank (roughly the equivalent of the Federal Reserve), called Reagan’s speech about his visit to the cemetery “a masterpiece.”

Present at the affair were 300 of West Germany’s leading names, including Chancellor Helmut Kohl and former Presidents Walter Scheel and Karl Carstens.

Tonight, after their arrival in Madrid, the Reagans will attend a private dinner in Zarzuela Palace with King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia.

A visit to a flamenco dancing class at Madrid’s Royal Theater begins a day of separate events for the First Lady on Tuesday. She will also tour the Prado Museum, attend a luncheon given by the queen, then rejoin her husband for a state dinner.

On Wednesday, the Reagans visit the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.

The First Lady has a full schedule in Lisbon on Thursday--beginning with a visit to a meeting of the Portuguese Parents Against Drug Abuse with Portugal’s first lady, Maria Manuela Eanes, who attended Nancy Reagan’s first ladies’ conference on drug abuse in Washington last month.

Thursday night, President Antonio Ramalho Eanes will give a state dinner for the Reagans, who return to Washington on Friday.

James Rosebush, Nancy Reagan’s chief of staff, said he anticipates that she will make foreign trips without her husband in the future as part of her campaign against drug abuse. The First Lady’s activities during the past month are a “sort of a preview of the next 3 1/2 years,” he said.