REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK : Security Checks Not for the Birds as Rain Dampens Summit Opening

Only the pigeons could get into the Piazza San Marco without a security check Monday afternoon, and nobody could see any of the great leaders of the world arriving at the Ducal Palace. The usually teeming San Marco waterfront, immortalized by Canaletto and other painters, was closed to all boats except those for police, press and the leaders.

The rain came pouring down just as the opening ceremonies for the 13th economic summit began. Even if the handful of rain-soaked tourists had not been kept hundreds of yards away behind barriers, they could have seen little. For security reasons, the path from the dock to the palace courtyard was covered by a canvas tunnel that hid President Reagan and the other leaders.

The man who thought up the idea of economic summits does not think much of them any more.

Former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who convened the first summit in 1975, believes that there has not been a successful such conference since 1979.

In an interview with the Paris newspaper Le Monde, Giscard d’Estaing said that summits fail because leaders refuse to focus on limited and specific economic issues. Instead, he said, they pontificate--with a great deal of media hype and a great lack of relevance--about broader matters.

“The final communiques,” he said, “don’t make much sense. There has not been much connection in the last four summits between what went on and what these communiques said.”

Soon after they got here, the 574 American journalists covering the conference came face to face with one of the economic realities sure to be discussed by the seven government leaders--the sharp fall in the value of the dollar in the last year. Venice has long been one of Europe’s most expensive cities, but the problem has been compounded for Americans by a weak dollar, which is now being exchanged for only 1,300 Italian lire.

The shock came as soon as reporters assembled at the press “discount” bar at the White House press center in the Hotel Excelsior on Lido Island. A small orange juice, for example, cost 4,000 lire (about $3).

“I paid 2,500 lire (almost $2) for coffee,” a Washington reporter said, “and they wouldn’t even refill it for free.”

The White House press office irritated some other delegations by refusing to hold press briefings at the regular press center on San Giorgio Maggiore Island. Instead, the White House press office operates out of the Hotel Excelsior on the Lido, about 20 minutes away by motorboat.

The inconvenience made it impractical for most White House correspondents to attend the briefings by other delegations and for most correspondents of other countries to attend the American briefings. There was some suspicion that the White House wanted it that way.

But a Canadian official said he accepted the American argument that the White House staff and correspondents were too numerous to work out of the small area provided by the Italian government on San Giorgio. The Italians had covered up a swimming pool and refurbished it as a press room for the Americans, setting aside a podium at the foot of the diving board for American briefers.

“The Italians tried to pressure the Americans to come to San Giorgio,” the Canadian official said, “but I told them a month ago that if they thought they could get the Americans there, they were dreaming in Technicolor.” In the end, the White House used the refurbished swimming pool as a supplemental press office to the main operation on the Lido.

In their pre-summit discussions with reporters, officials were reluctant to detail the positions of their leaders until the talks were under way. Asked if Canada would approve an American preemptive strike at Iranian missiles, a senior Canadian official replied Monday morning, “I’m not going to offer a preemptive response to preemptive options.”

Asked by a reporter why he was scheduled to enter the side door instead of the front door of the conference center in the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore Island when he arrives this morning, President Reagan replied, “I just wait until somebody points me in the direction I’m supposed to go, and I don’t ask any questions about it.”

The Italians are involved in an election campaign of their own, and they understand why Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain could not attend the entire summit. British parliamentary elections will be held on Thursday, and Thatcher will leave the summit this afternoon to resume her campaign.

But there is some annoyance that she did not bother to arrive in Venice on Monday evening until after Italian Prime Minister Amintore Fanfani had officially greeted all the other leaders in ceremonies at the Ducal Palace. It seemed almost like a snub, and some Italian officials were reportedly wondering whether Thatcher’s campaign schedule was really so tight that she couldn’t have gotten away an hour or two earlier.

Italian photographers have the reputation of being rough, and American photographers found out just how rough when Reagan was ushered into the Ducal Palace by Fanfani.

After hours of waiting, the Americans and Italians tried to enter the small, dark Militia da Mar room and take pictures of the leaders. But the Italians became aggressive and started to shove the Americans out of the way. Italian officials called off the shoving match with a compromise, sending the two groups of photographers in different waves, first the Americans, then the Italians.

Times staff writers Don Cook and Jack Nelson contributed to this story.