Won’t Be ‘Stampeded’ on Response to Soviets: Bush

President Bush, saying he does not want to be “stampeded,” defended his Administration’s go-slow approach to relations with the Soviet Union on Sunday and warned against Western “complacency” about Soviet intentions.

“I know some are quite restless at the pace I’ve set,” Bush said, “but I think it’s a proper pace. . . . We have time.”

Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization must guard against being “stampeded into something that might prove to be no good for the alliance or no good for the United States,” he said at a joint press conference with French President Francois Mitterrand after the two gave commencement speeches at Boston University.

Bush also reiterated his Administration’s cautious approach toward China, saying the United States supports freedom and democracy but wants to say nothing that might incite bloodshed between the government and students campaigning for democracy.

“We do support freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and clearly we support democracy,” Bush told a questioner. “I do not want to be gratuitous in giving advice, but I would encourage restraint. I do not want to see bloodshed.”

Citing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s methods of achieving political ends through peaceful protest, Bush added that he “might suggest familiarization with that for the people in China.”

Asked if he had made any representations to the Chinese leadership, Bush replied that the Administration had been in touch with U.S. Ambassador James R. Lilley on that question, but the President indicated that he sought a nonconfrontational approach.

“I think this perhaps is a time for caution,” the President said, “because we aspire to see the Chinese people have democracy, but we do not exhort in a way that is going to stir up a military confrontation. . . .” At the same time, in his speech, Bush backed away from recent Administration criticism of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

“I’m grateful for the steps that Mr. Gorbachev is taking,” Bush said. “We should give credit where credit is due.”

On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater had accused Gorbachev of phoniness, calling him a “drugstore cowboy” and saying that his arms control proposals were “PR gambits.”

The swipe reflected widespread frustration among senior Bush aides about the global applause Gorbachev has been winning for his initiatives. But Fitzwater and other White House aides have since tried to dismiss the remark as merely a colorful aside, and Bush seems to have abandoned that line after the display of White House pique brought complaints from all sides.

‘Wary of Caricatures’

The complaints continued Sunday as Mitterrand, asked at the press conference about the remark, chided that “one must be wary of caricatures.”

“Mr. Gorbachev is worth very much more than that,” he said.

Bush’s speech was the fourth in a series designed to outline the Administration’s foreign policy. So far, the series has drawn tepid, or worse, reviews from both adversaries and allies, who have complained that Bush and his advisers lack imagination.

Bush devoted the bulk of the latest speech to U.S. relations within NATO. As in case of his prior speeches, which have outlined policies toward eastern Europe, Latin America and the Soviet Union, Bush offered no dramatic new proposals, instead outlining general attitudes that he said would guide Administration policy.

The United States, he said, will keep troops in Europe “as long as they are wanted and needed to preserve the peace.” He also welcomed Europe’s move toward greater unification.

Despite “a historical ambivalence on the part of some Americans toward a more united Europe” and despite the inevitable trade disputes that will arise as Europe moves toward a unified market beginning in 1992, “we believe a strong, united Europe means a strong America.”

“What an absurdity it would be if future historians attribute the demise of the Western Alliance to disputes over beef hormones and wars over pasta,” Bush said, referring to two recent trade disputes.

Bush made few direct comments on the most pressing current dispute troubling NATO--the debate between the Washington and West Germany over short-range nuclear forces in Europe. Bonn wants the West to begin negotiations quickly with Kremlin for reductions in such weapons, talks that Washington, backed by Britain, resists until the Warsaw Pact’s advantage over NATO in conventional weapons has been narrowed by negotiations now under way in Vienna.

‘Basis for a Solution’

On Friday, Washington offered a formula for settling the dispute. A West German government spokesman said Sunday that the U.S. proposal “forms the basis for a solution” but that further negotiations will be needed. West Germany is expected to present its latest proposal on the issue today and both sides are hoping to settle the dispute before next week’s scheduled NATO summit in Brussels.

U.S. officials see the short-range nuclear forces dispute as a prime example of “complacency” about the Soviets. With Gorbachev abandoning Cold War rhetoric, support for NATO, particularly for its nuclear forces, has been declining in Europe.

“We have an obligation to temper optimism--and I am optimistic--with prudence,” Bush said. “While change in the Soviet Union is dramatic, it is not yet complete.”

Ironically, however, complacency is exactly the charge that critics have been levying against Bush and his Administration.

As seen by the critics, Bush and his top advisers, who helped build the post-World War II world order, now seem wedded to the status quo and unresponsive to the dramatic events that, as Bush himself said, are “transforming (the current order) into something very different.”