GORBACHEV: COLD WAR IS HISTORY
San Antonio Express
54811727.html
Aug 25 2009
Compiled from wire reports – Originally published on June 5, 1990.
SAN FRANCISCO — Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, characterizing
the Cold War as history Monday, said at Stanford University that he
wants to dismantle "military confrontation as soon as possible."
Speaking through an interpreter in a TV broadcast that was relayed
to his homeland, Gorbachev referred to high military costs for both
the United States and the Soviet Union.
"The Cold War is now behind us, and let us not wrangle over who won
it, who won the Cold War. There can be no winners in the Cold War,"
he said.
Gorbachev was applauded and cheered lustily as he thanked young
scientists for helping bring peaceful resolution to a conflict that
has threatened atomic war for two generations.
He said it is time for both nations to "protect the environment,
combat hunger, diseases, drug addiction and ignorance."
"Your generation will not only be creating a new world but will also
live in it," he said. "Much of it will be different from whatever we
can imagine now, and from what I’ve been saying to you here.
"The challenge is to make sure that people in that new world live a
better life in great freedom."
Donald Kennedy, the university president, called him an "architect
of a world transformation more dramatic than any in our generation."
In a historic meeting between Soviet and South Korean leaders,
Gorbachev and President Roh Tae-woo achieved a historic breakthrough
Monday night by pledging to establish formal political and economic
ties between their nations, which have been the bitterest of enemies
most of the past 45 years.
The meeting could lead to stronger bonds between the Soviet Union
and Japan, the country Moscow believes is most capable of infusing
new life into its moribund economy. And it eventually could ease
tensions between North and South Korea, which have been engaged in
an often-deadly face-off across the 38th Parallel since their war
ended in 1953.
Earlier, Gorbachev appeared to be moved when, after he completed his
speech at Stanford, former Secretary of State George Shultz presented
him with a 1921 poster from the Hoover Institution’s collection
of Soviet artifacts. The poster said: "Long live the sun, may the
darkness be hidden."
Gorbachev’s speech, followed by a meeting with prominent California
business leaders, wrapped up his seven-day tour of North America.
He was 45 minutes late for the day’s first official event, coffee
with former President Reagan.
The State Department’s protocol director said travel weariness had kept
the Gorbachevs a bit longer in their suite at the Soviet consulate,
a rest period interrupted by the buzzing of a Piper Cub packing a
banner that urged freedom for Soviet minorities.
But in a blur of speeches, handshakes and hand-waving crowds, he
probably did not see the banner or much of any of the other protests
by demonstrators urging him with placards and chants to free the
Baltic states, end mistreatment of Armenians and a dozen other issues.
The world’s most-prominent Marxist returned from the Palo Alto campus
to meet with California’s top business leaders in a luxury hotel.
Following a look at Golden Gate Bridge, they were to depart from
San Francisco International Airport for the Soviet Union after an
exhausting day.
It was the first visit by the Soviet Union’s top politician in three
decades, perhaps the most memorable by any Soviet since a czarist ship
poached 1,500 otter skins from San Francisco Bay in 1811. That visit
led a year later to establishment of Fort Ross in what now is Sonoma
County by the Russian American Fur Co., which left four decades later.
At Stanford, protesters began lining the main entrance at 6 a.m.
They included two bus loads of Armenian-Americans who demanded
better treatment of Armenians in Soviet Union, but the topic had
been broached to Gorbachev when he met briefly Sunday night with
Gov. George Deukmejian.
Deukmejian, who is of Armenian descent, delivered a letter to Gorbachev
urging him to resolve conflicts involving ethnic Armenians and lift
an economic blockade that stifled earthquake relief efforts in Armenia.