Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 21, 1990 TAG: 9003232612
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: TOM RAUM ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Is there a fortune teller in the Bush White House to match the Reagans' astrologer?
Not quite. But a soothsayer might come in handy to help interpret some of the president's recent pronouncements - answers that seem only to raise more questions.
Bush, perhaps deliberately so, has been perfectly unclear on: Lithuanian independence, the status of East Jerusalem, trade talks with Japan and a budget plan by Rep. Dan Rostenkowski.
"Read all the tea leaves. Listen to the nuances. It's out there very clearly," was Bush's response when reporters asked him whether the White House was sending conflicting signals on the Rostenkowski plan.
By any analysis, the White House position was anything but very clear.
Bush's opaque comments only served to underscore what many analysts see as an effort by his administration to have it both ways on the bold plan by the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
The White House has embraced the concept of Rostenkowski's plan while quickly backing away from its most controversial features: tax increases and a one-year freeze in Social Security benefits.
On Lithuania, the president also is verbally walking a tightrope in balancing a longstanding U.S. refusal to recognize that state's incorporation into the Soviet Union in the 1940s with his desire to be supportive of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
The administration has refused to extend formal diplomatic recognition to Lithuania in the aftermath of the vote in its parliament to secede from the Soviet Union.
When he spoke with reporters on Tuesday, Bush praised Gorbachev for restraint in dealing with the rebellious republic.
"They're still talking peaceful change. That's essential and they've been very good about it," he said.
But within the hour, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater was reading a statement about Soviet troop movements around Lithuania that urged the Kremlin to avoid creating "an atmosphere of intimidation and increasing tension."
Despite the obvious difference in tone, Fitzwater asserted that the president was aware of the strong troop-movement statement when he made his less-provocative remarks.
But the confusing Bush statement that has generated the most attention recently was his assertion, when speaking about Israeli settlements in occupied areas, that "the foreign policy of the United States says we do not believe there should be new settlements in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem."
Strictly speaking, that is American policy. But the subject of settlements in Jerusalem is a touchy one and usually not mentioned by U.S. officials.
Whether deliberate or not, Bush's comments linking settlements in the historic holy city with those in the West Bank and Gaza disrupted progress toward Middle East peace talks.
Some analysts have even blamed his words for contributing to the fall of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.
Bush's choice of words also caused a stir when he told an electronics industry conference that among the items he discussed specifically with Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu in California earlier this month were "satellites and telecommunications, super computers, forest products and semiconductors."
Not so, according to the Japanese. Kaifu's office denied that the two leaders discussed telecommunications.
Fitzwater, seeking to sort out the tea leaves on that one, declared: "Well, you see, the problem is that it depends on how you want to define it."
"The president and the prime minister discussed the general problem of structural impediments, and raised the issues of telecommunications. . . . He just defines the word [specifically] differently than you did. Specific to him meant the general policy."
"You have to use the right words in this business," Fitzwater said.
by CNB