Warmth and Leadership Hailed at Toronto Windup : Allied Leaders Sing Praises of Reagan--if Not His Policies--in Farewell Tribute

All leaders of the industrialized world heaped praise Tuesday on a reluctant President Reagan in the warm glow of the end of his eighth and final economic summit--even though praise for the man did not always mean praise for his policies.

“His leadership has been strong; his accomplishments most substantial, and his place in history secure,” said Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. “Ronald Reagan has been for all of us at this table a gracious friend and a trusted ally. We shall all miss his warmth and his wisdom.”

And British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, long an international ally of the President’s, told a news conference that Mulroney’s words represented “a handsome and well-deserved tribute to President Reagan with the backing of each of us.”

Frequently at Odds

The only discordant note came from French President Francois Mitterrand, a Socialist who has frequently found himself at odds with his American counterpart, who leaves office on Jan. 20.

“When someone leaves after playing such an important role on the world stage,” Mitterrand said during a news conference, “it is only normal and polite that you wish him happiness and a long retirement. . . . But that has nothing to do with policy.”

Then Mitterrand, in remarkable moments of frankness, described some of his conflicts with Reagan since the two arrived in Ottawa in 1981 as new presidents, each taking part in a summit for the first time.

Mitterrand stressed that he believes the arguments were provoked by a tendency of Reagan to turn the summits into something other than the informal sessions sought by Mitterrand.

On the drug trade, Mitterrand said, Reagan successfully urged this summit to create an international task force to fight drugs. And he complained that the U.S. President brought up aid to the Philippines without first warning the summit leaders.

These battles, however, Mitterrand said, “did not go beyond the limits of reason.”

But these frank revelations, offered by the smiling 71-year-old Mitterrand without any hint of rancor, did not discolor a day in which the other leaders were determined to fashion a meaningful tribute to the departing Reagan.

The White House staff at first seemed reluctant to acknowledge that Reagan was a lame-duck President attending an economic summit for the last time. But in the face of so much farewell adulation, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater issued a thank-you in the name of the President.

Reagan, said Fitzwater in a statement summarizing the final session, “is gratified by the accolades from his fellow leaders. He appreciates their friendship and the personal bonds that have been established in these summits.” The President was clearly in a good mood as he and the six others finished their last meeting--one that was extended by nearly an hour as a result of Reagan’s differences with Mitterrand over the summit-ending communique. But, even though Reagan would most likely never meet the other leaders as a group again, he made it clear he was not in the mood for farewells.

Asked by a reporter if he had received a “farewell hug” at his last business session with the others, Reagan, heading off to the final ceremonial luncheon, joked: “I’m not saying farewell. I’m going to lunch.”

But Mulroney, the host for the conference, would not let the President escape a tribute. After reading the final communique, thus officially closing the summit, Mulroney added a postscript.

With Reagan and the five other summit participants seated at his side on the stage of the Roy Thomson concert hall, the Canadian leader--in a highly unusual personal note--praised Reagan for his leadership and accomplishments and added:

“Ronald Reagan leaves Toronto today with our respect and our affection and our best wishes for good health and every happiness for Nancy and himself.”

A Summing Up

Before the economic summit opened, White House officials were not looking on it as a final chapter in the Reagan presidency. Instead, they considered it an opportunity to continue the summing up of his eight years in office, a process that he began dramatically in the Moscow summit last month and then in London with a moving speech on the progress of East-West relations and the role of democracy in the modern world.

Yet as the summit drew to a close Tuesday afternoon, it was obvious that it had taken on the mood of a farewell.

In contrast with the first economic summit the President attended seven years ago, said a White House official who asked not to be identified, the 1988 meeting provided an opportunity to recognize that “many of the economic goals this President advocated early on have (become) part of the industrialized countries’ ways of doing things.”

Despite the long hours Reagan had spent in four lengthy meetings since Sunday plowing through the global issues of the summit, the 77-year-old President showed none of the fatigue that other such gatherings have prompted in him--most recently his meeting three weeks ago with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Appearing feisty over the fight between Vice President George Bush and Bush’s Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, to succeed him, Reagan retorted when asked whether Dukakis would win: “Over my (pause) live body.”