REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK : Delegates Had Little to Argue About, So Everybody Went Home Early

As their Western alliance moves into its fifth decade, its past mission fast disappearing and its future as misty and uncertain as these often-damp mornings in London, the leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization found themselves with so little to argue over at their summit here that they couldn’t even fill the time allotted for their meetings.

So, they stopped talking and went home early.

They met behind the closed doors of Lancaster House, a 19th-Century mansion on the edge of Green Park that was begun in 1827 by Frederick, Duke of York and Albany and Heir Presumptive to the Throne. The duke died two years later, without gaining the promise of his title, and leaving an unfinished house and a considerable mortgage.

Unlike Frederick, President Bush and the leaders of NATO’s 15 other members were able to walk away from Lancaster House with considerably more promise. After all, what they set out to achieve was nothing less than the end of the Cold War and the reshaping of the new Europe, East and West, that is emerging in its wake--a goal they nearly claimed to have gained.

What they really did, however, was this: On Thursday, the first day of their meeting, they said hello. On Friday, the final day of the summit conference, they said goodby. In between, they had dinner at Buckingham Palace.

On such disagreements as there were, the foreign ministers of the 16 nations met separately, thrashing out--if such a strong term can be used--their bosses’ differences until they could reach consensus on a summit-ending communique.

White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater offered two explanations why the summiteers finished their first meeting well before the appointed hour.

“They broke a little early because they had completed the round of opening discussions and remarks”--that is, the reading of their initial statements written by their advisers in the weeks leading up to the conference to formally outline each nation’s positions--”and really the next order of business was the consideration of the communique,” Fitzwater said.

Once again, why did the first day’s meeting end early?

“It was done to prepare for those substantive issues (raised in the discussions over the communique) as well as to get ready for dinner,” Fitzwater said, in a moment of candor.

For really telling it like it is, though, officials tend to prefer anonymity:

The only element that threatened the speedy pace of the meetings, said one close observer of the closed-door sessions, was the rule of thumb that holds true at all such international diplomatic gatherings: “The smaller the country, the longer the speech.”

Bush’s visit to London came on the seventh and eighth days of a 13-day trip that began at his vacation home in Kennebunkport, Me., last Friday and won’t end until late at night next Wednesday, when he returns to the White House from the international economic summit conference he will host in Houston.

He headed for Houston, where his official residence in his adopted home state is a rented hotel room, on Friday afternoon.

To reach the British capital for the second visit of his presidency, Bush flew overnight from Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire, arriving only hours before the first summit session began.

One senior member of his group said the rigors of the trip did not seem to take a toll of the 66-year-old President, but he confided that appearances can be deceiving.

“He seemed in pretty good shape,” the official said. But, he added, Bush can get himself psyched up for such occasions.

“If you’re the President, you’re part of the show. Your adrenalin is high,” he said.

London has always been a favorite stopping-off point for touring American officials. It has become so popular that in 1989, there were approximately 17,000 “official” visits by American officials of varying ranks--members of Congress and other government functionaries and their spouses. The numbers have threatened to overwhelm the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Grosvenor Square. Keeping the invasion in order is a task worthy of Dwight D. Eisenhower, an American hero in Britain whose statue stares out over the square.

A routine visitor here is former Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger. London has been a favorite of his since World War II, and he gets a sympathetic ear from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for his never-ending trumpet-call of wariness toward the East.

And in the land of Shakespeare and Milton, it was author Weinberger whom Thatcher singled out in her statement opening the summit.

“Recently, I was re-reading two books in preparation for this summit,” she said. “One was Cap Weinberger’s ‘Fighting for Peace’ (in which) . . . he told us of the unpreparedness when he was called to serve his country at the beginning of the last war. That must never happen again.”

Another frequent visitor to London is Secretary of State James A. Baker III. Baker arrived on the night of July 4, when much of the United States was busy celebrating the anniversary of the nation’s independence and much of Britain was mourning not the loss of their colonies, but the loss by their soccer team to West Germany in the semifinal round of the the World Cup in Italy.

Baker was delayed in his arrival by about three hours. Officials said the delay was caused by a French air traffic controllers’ work stoppage. But others suggested the trouble was more directly linked to a slowdown at London’s Heathrow Airport--and the preoccupation of workers there with the the soccer contest whose broadcast riveted, and then saddened, the nation.