Word: schmidts
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...Bonn the Secretary had to mollify some outspoken critics of U.S. moves in the post-Afghanistan era. Certain West German officials had privately derided Carter's Olympic boycott as "downright dumb." Chancellor Helmut Schmidt resented not being consulted in advance about this decision. A bare two hours' notice on the day of its announcement, he observed unsmilingly, was "a little late." The West Germans also feared serious setbacks to their international trade if they followed Carter's proscriptions on commercial dealings with Moscow...
...Schmidt cordially received Vance at his Rhineside residence and termed their meeting "extraordinarily useful," but obvious U.S.-West German differences remained. While Vance stressed at a press conference that the Soviets "must pay the cost flowing from the blatant invasion of a neighboring country," Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher took a very different tack. Said he: "We must do everything we can to avoid escalation, make a political solution of the problem possible, and pursue détente...
...Americans-and indeed to many Europeans-the reaction was irritatingly familiar. French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt issued a joint statement strongly condemning the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Three days later, Paris abruptly declared that it would not be represented at a German-sponsored meeting of Western European foreign ministers with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance in Bonn. Once again, France stood out as seemingly arrogant and as the ally least disposed to back Washington in an international crisis...
...party for French reporters, was that the Soviet move may not have been "premeditated." Foreign Minister Jean François-Poncet later tried to justify the equivocal French response by noting (incorrectly) that "France buys more oil from the Soviet Union than from Iran." Even the Giscard-Schmidt communiqué appeared indecisive to some. "It says to the Soviets, 'The next time you pull an Afghanistan you will be punished,' " complained Professor Alfred Grosser of the Institut d'Etudes Politiques. "That is the action of a weak parent...
...latest American-French rift, sadly enough, reopened old wounds that appeared to be healing. In contrast to his predecessors, Giscard has made a conscientious effort to defuse tensions between Paris and Washington. He has, for example, been far less critical of Carter's economic policies than Schmidt. French military officials now work more closely with their NATO counterparts than they have in years. The U.S. and France have also smoothly coordinated their efforts in Africa. American planes carried the French troops that helped put down the rebellion in Zaire's Shaba province in 1978. The trouble...