Let’s End Cold War, Gorbachev Urged by Bush

President Bush, proclaiming the end of an era of “hard, joyless peace between two armed camps,” called on Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Wednesday to join him in an effort to “once and for all end the Cold War” when the two meet off Malta next week.

In a televised Thanksgiving-eve speech to the nation, Bush hailed the changes sweeping Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and said that the time soon may arrive when East and West can cooperate on global issues such as the environment, trade, drugs and human rights.

“Now we are at the threshold of the 1990s. And as we begin the new decade, I am reaching out to President Gorbachev, asking him to work with me to bring down the last barriers to a new world of freedom,” Bush said in a 15-minute speech delivered from the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md.

“Let us move beyond containment and once and for all end the Cold War,” the President said.

Bush, citing the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the democratic reforms sweeping the Warsaw Pact nations of East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, noted that the upcoming summit meeting at sea with Gorbachev can help to create a different world.

“This is not the end of the book of history,” the President said. “It is a joyful end to one of history’s saddest chapters.”

Bush said that he invited Gorbachev to participate in the two-day summit aboard U.S. and Soviet naval ships in the Mediterranean Sea to expand freedom and enhance the peace process in Eastern Europe and throughout the world.

“Off the island nation of Malta, Mikhail Gorbachev and I will begin the work of years,” the President said. “We can help the peoples of Europe achieve a new destiny, in a peaceful Europe whole and free.”

Bush called Gorbachev “the dynamic architect of Soviet reform” and said “there is no greater advocate of perestroika than the President of the United States.” Perestroika is the ambitious economic and social reform effort undertaken by the Soviet leader.

Bush said that East and West “can now raise our hopes on other issues--our common environment, our common war against drugs, as well as on human rights and the regional conflicts that remain.”

Nevertheless, Bush also took pains to make clear that a steadily warming relationship with Gorbachev will not diminish his close ties with Western European leaders.

On Friday, the President will meet with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at Camp David to discuss the Dec. 2-3 Mediterranean summit. At the conclusion of the summit, Bush noted, he will travel to Brussels to consult with North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials.

During the speech, Bush addressed criticisms that his Administration has responded timidly to momentous changes in the Communist Bloc nations.

“But to those who question our prudent pace, they must understand that a time of historic change is no time for recklessness,” Bush said. “The peace, and the confidence, and the security of our friends in Europe--it’s just too important.”

In comments before his televised address, Bush suggested that the era in which the two superpowers decided the fate of Europe also is passing.

The Malta session will not be a “Yalta” summit at which the leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States divide up Europe, he told reporters aboard Air Force One.

“We’re not trying to divvy up anything or decide the fate of any sovereign nation,” he said, referring to the 1945 summit meeting at the Soviet resort city of Yalta.

“It would be presumptuous and arrogant” for the U.S. and Soviet leaders today to “impinge on the sovereignty of any country, East or West,” Bush said. “And that is not what we’re going to be doing.”

Despite the recent march toward democracy and peace in much of the world, Bush noted that troubled spots remain, including Panama, Nicaragua and Cuba. He made no mention, however, of El Salvador.

Times staff writer Thomas B. Rosenstiel contributed to this report.