House Speaker Wright Hails Soviet Offer as Best Opportunity for Peace
Speaker of the House Jim Wright (D-Tex.) said Thursday that new Soviet arms control proposals offer America its best opportunity in four decades to reduce nuclear weapons.
A congressional delegation led by Wright met with Kremlin leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Wednesday. The day before, Gorbachev told Secretary of State George P. Shultz that the Soviet Union is willing to remove its shorter-range missiles in East Germany and Czechoslovakia as part of an agreement to eliminate the longer-range intermediate nuclear forces from Europe.
“There is no question whatever that the Congress believes this is our best opportunity since World War II to make real peace. . . ,” Wright told ABC-TV in an interview from Moscow.
Wright said that “If for once we could have a mutual, verifiable reduction” in nuclear weapons, both countries could devote “unproductive expenditures” on arms to “things like roads, bridges and clean water.”
In a separate meeting Wednesday, President Andrei A. Gromyko told the congressmen that the U.S. response to new Soviet arms control proposals was inadequate for an agreement to be reached.
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