Interviewer
Prime Minister, there has been much talk of new ideas and an evolving situation but can I take it that your stand on the question of a united Germany being a full member of NATO remains fixed?
Prime Minister
Yes, it does and I don't think it will be damaging in any way for the peace and security of the Warsaw Pact, in particular the Soviet Union.
I think that they understand somehow that to assure peace, you want to keep American troops in Europe. I think they understand that had American troops stayed in Europe between World Wars I and II, there would never have been a World War II and so therefore we must learn that lesson, and the only place for American troops to be in Europe is either Germany or Britain. Britain is on the fringes; it would not be enough for them to be there, so they have still to be in Germany and that does mean a unified Germany in NATO, so that is in their interests as well. [end p1]
Of course, they are still a little apprehensive about the unification of Germany—many people are because that is still within living memory and the sufferings which happened then and in the case of the Soviet Union, they lost 27 million lives and they are seeking a kind of reassurance from NATO as a whole and we are asking what would act as a reassurance and they are giving us some ideas and we are thinking up others. I do not want to detail them before we have got them worked out, but the significant thing is that NATO understands that the Soviet Union wants reassurance and we are all struggling to find it, knowing that a unified Germany must stay in NATO.
Interviewer
But isn't one of the areas that you feel particularly strongly about also likely to increase Soviet anxieties about the question of Germany being within NATO? I am talking about your statement to the NATO Foreign Ministers—the need for NATO to keep its nuclear weapons up-to-date and based in Germany—that is not going to help ease Mr. Gorbachev 's anxieties.
Prime Minister
I really do not think that it makes it more difficult. When it comes to negotiations on nuclear weapons, if they are the strategic ones, it is with the United States; if they are the shorter-range ones, then it is with the Alliance as a whole, following the CFE arrangements that are now underway. You know, you will not keep your security unless you keep your weapons and [end p2] your training and your technology up-to-date, so that it is not surprising that if you have tanks, they are kept up-to-date; your guns are kept up-to-date; your aircraft are kept up-to-date; your destroyers and ships are kept up-to-date; so your nuclear weapons are kept up-to-date, otherwise they are not effective, but you negotiate with the other side about the numbers of those nuclear weapons and that, as you know, we are pledged to do after a CFE Agreement on conventional weapons has been signed and started to be implemented. So already we are beginning to think of what form those negotiations would take and what we should include in them. But up-to-date weapons is not a new concept. You cannot say you have got a sure defence if you say: “Please, they are out-of-date, I don't know whether they will work, we are not trained to use them!”
Interviewer
But aren't you running the risk of antagonising the new German Government? It is going to make life very difficult to sell it to their public in turn.
Prime Minister
I wonder if it is. Is it really so difficult to sell people the truth? That NATO has kept the peace in Europe for over forty-five years and that is just a longer period of peace than Europe has ever enjoyed and therefore this system which has kept the peace, which matters to us more than anything else, is the one which can go on keeping the peace and will do. [end p3]
But things come up all of a sudden. People say: “Who is the enemy now? Why do you need this defence?” and I just have to remind them that, for example, we all of us had to go up the Persian Gulf when there were attacks on oil tankers and they needed some protection. Now, you cannot keep countries going unless they have got access to oil, so the Soviet Union was in the Gulf, the United States was in the Gulf, we had had our destroyers and frigates on the edge of the Gulf for a long time, since 1980; France went; Norway went and we were the only country that had minesweepers, so we sent those four round as well. We could not have sent them, we could not have responded, unless the whole ethos of this country had been, “We must always be prepared for any challenge we may meet!” So the weapons were up-to-date, they were highly skilled and well-trained people and that is just an object lesson—you never know where the next challenge may come from.
Interviewer
It is clear from listening to President Gorbachev, that he believes that the Warsaw Pact has responded more swiftly to to the changes in international relations by taking on this political dimension as he sees it now. Is NATO prepared to go down that same political route when it meets in London in July?
Prime Minister
I thought the Warsaw Pact communique was an excellent one and again, of itself, for them to issue that kind of communique showed how far things have moved forward and how far the leaders of the [end p4] East European countries have moved with them.
You know, a few weeks ago, Jim Baker suggested that NATO take on a more political role—we do have a political role in the North Atlantic Council—and a number of us took that up and I spoke about it yesterday at NATO saying yes, that I think that NATO should be the forum for our main transatlantic relationship between the United States, Canada and Europe and we should enlarge that forum from a defence forum to a political forum and there is no reason why we should not have much closer associations with the United States, maybe a free trade area between the United States, Canada and the Community, and as we talk about things in the European Monetary System, why we should not also think of talking about some kind of relationship which involves the dollar. But these things are things we have not tackled in NATO so far but we are prepared to tackle that kind of thing now.
Interviewer
Prime Minister, when you were last here in Moscow in September, you praised President Gorbachev 's economic reforms. Now since then, the economic situation here seems to have disimproved—there has been panic buying on the streets. Isn't the patience of the Soviet people being stretched to the very limit?
Prime Minister
No, I don't think so. I think Mikhail Gorbachevhe is trying to secure their understanding and this change of attitude from being told what to do and not perhaps working as hard as you would in a western society [end p5] because it would seem that you don't necessarily get the extra reward if you work hard than the reward you get if you don't work so hard, so you have got a complete change of attitude.
It has to be incentives. It has to be understood and it sounds strange—it is quite difficult to get across. You do not get your standard of living from the government; you look to your own efforts mainly to give you your standard of living and the harder you work, the higher the standard of living you will get.
You know, there is that old saying in the old Communist-Socialist days, a saying here in the Soviet Union: “Yes, the Government pretends to pay us and we pretend to work!” You know, their way of hitting out against the Communist system was not to work too hard and not to put their heart and soul into it.
Now it is no longer a strict Communist system and it is trying to move away from that and that requires people accepting responsibility with the freedoms they take. They are taking the extra freedom, they are enjoying it, the atmosphere is different, and it is saying to them: “You must take much more responsibility and make much more effort!”
Interviewer
Are there any doubts in your mind about President Gorbachev 's ability to survive in power?
Prime Minister
No. I think Mikhail Gorbachevhe is still very much in command. He is confident that his policies are right. He is a great exponent of [end p6] them, as you saw in the press conference today, when he really took the trouble to explain what he believed, why he believed it and how he was going to tackle it; that this was really one of the most serious and one of the most exciting things that was happening in this century and he is determined to go ahead and complete it and therefore he wants people's support and to write it up really as one of the most significant things which will bring great advantages both to the people of the Soviet Union and to the peoples of the world.
Interviewer
And finally, Prime Minister, on a separate question. On Monday, England play their first game in the World Cup. How concerned are you about the possibility of English football fans causing trouble in Italy?
Prime Minister
Very concerned! Who wouldn't be? We are doing as much as we possibly can to see that it does not happen but in the end, it is the people who go there taking their responsibility for their behaviour, not letting themselves down, their team down or their country down—and we hope that they will take that view and really make certain that this time our fans are an example of how to behave and not an instance of misbehaviour.