Summit Ends in Compromise : Dispute on Farm Trade Resolved

The world’s richest democracies wrapped up their annual summit today, setting conditions for sending “meaningful and sustained” financial aid to the Soviet Union and agreeing to reduce worldwide agricultural subsidies.

The last-minute trade compromise finessed a nasty dispute over farm subsidies.

The summit urged that Western technical assistance be dispatched immediately to help Moscow “mobilize its own resources,” and the leaders ordered a study to recommend ways to target future aid.

President Bush, in a wrap-up news conference, said the moves on Soviet aid were “an effort to encourage forward motion and be helpful.” Bush said he would brief Mikhail S. Gorbachev on the summit results and had already sent a preliminary cable.

In a final communique, the seven leaders called on the Soviet Union to “shift resources substantially away from the military sector” and to “quit support” for satellite states and nations involved in regional conflicts.

“Maybe this can lead” to direct cash support from the United States, he said. But, Bush said, “I’m not enthusiastic about the intercontinental ballistic missiles aimed at U.S. cities,” and he said he found $5 billion a year in Soviet aid to Cuba “a little contradictory.”

Others were ready to move ahead. “We are on the front line as Europeans and maybe we can help the United States understand why we want to help the Soviet Union,” Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti said. “When someone is ill, you don’t want to wait for medicine.”

Satisfied with their 11th-hour compromises on farm subsidies and the environment, the leaders quickly concluded their 16th annual summit this morning.

“This was a summit that addressed itself to a rapidly changing world,” Bush said.

Trade negotiators reached a compromise agricultural agreement in the early hours today, and the seven heads of government spent just half an hour reviewing the document before giving their approval at their final session at Rice University.

The United States insisted on language calling for across-the-board cuts in all categories of farm subsidies. But the agreement also contained ambiguous language acceptable to the reluctant Europeans, urging each nation “to make substantial, progressive reductions.”

The farm dispute had threatened to disrupt the annual gathering.

British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd acknowledged that there had been some hard words. “But it will be a more successful summit than if everybody had come here determined to sing from the beginning a unified hymn of praise.”

In a self-congratulatory final communique, the world leaders patted themselves on the back for a global economy that was still chugging along, although at a decidedly slow pace.

The communique also agreed to a pilot study to help save the Amazon rain forests, but in a victory for the Administration, did not press for specific reduction targets for the pollutants suspected of causing a global warming of the environment.

The final communique basically recycled many of the environmental pledges made by the same countries at last year’s summit session in Paris.