Quayle Says Events Make Him Fonder of Gorbachev

Hard-line Vice President Dan Quayle said today his opinion of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has changed for the better in recent months.

While President Bush was off at the drug summit in Colombia, Quayle spent the morning touring a Washington hospital ward filled with “boarder babies”--infants abandoned at birth by drug-abusing mothers.

Quayle, who has previously taken a highly skeptical view toward the Soviet Union, was asked as he left the Greater Southeast Community Hospital if the fast-changing events toward liberalization of the Communist system had made him less suspicious of Gorbachev.

“I would say anybody that has not changed their mind over the last six or seven months is not thinking correctly,” he replied.

“Of course, you change your opinion,” Quayle said. “A lot of things have happened, and I have a different assessment of where the Soviet Union is heading and where it may or may not go than I did six months ago or a year ago.”

Gorbachev this week agreed to Bush’s proposal for dramatic reductions in American and Soviet forces in Europe, limiting both sides to 195,000 troops in central Europe and allowing the United States to keep 30,000 elsewhere in Europe.

Quayle, who remained in Washington during Bush’s brief trip, defended the President’s decision to go to Colombia despite reported threats to his safety by drug lords.

“The President is fully aware of what he is doing,” he said. “He analyzed every single fact that was presented to him, and I can assure you he is not the type . . . to put the office of the presidency at risk, nor to put himself into a risky situation.”