Reagan and Nixon Meet in White House, Discuss Criticism of Arms Control Stance
President Reagan met privately with former President Richard M. Nixon last week and discussed Nixon’s criticism of the Administration’s arms control stance, it was disclosed Wednesday.
Presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said the two met for about an hour in a White House study on April 28. He said Reagan requested the meeting, and Nixon flew to Washington in a government plane.
John Taylor, a spokesman in Nixon’s office in New York, said he believes it was the first time that Nixon had been at the White House since Reagan sent him and former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s funeral in 1981.
Nixon criticized the Administration’s arms control stance in a column co-authored with former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and distributed by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate.
Nixon and Kissinger maintained, among other things, that negotiating a sharp reduction in intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe, including shorter-range warheads in this category, would leave U.S. allies vulnerable to Soviet conventional strength.
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