Carter, Gorbachev Talk at Kremlin
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MOSCOW — Former President Jimmy Carter met Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Wednesday, with the Soviet leader saying Moscow has no intention of infringing on U.S. interests in the Middle East but warning Western countries not to pursue unrealistic objectives in the region.
“We understand that the United States and other Western countries have interests in that region,” he told Carter, who is in Moscow on a private visit. “The Soviet Union has no intention of infringing on them. . . . But the Western countries in turn should not pursue unrealistic objectives for settling the crisis,” the Tass news agency quoted him as saying.
He also reiterated the Soviet Union’s desire for an international conference on the Middle East involving all parties to the conflict--including the Palestinians--so long as it did not become an “umbrella” for separate deals.
Under Carter, the Soviet Union was frozen out of Middle East negotiations when then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat turned to Washington for help in arranging the Camp David meetings that led to the Egyptian-Israeli treaty of March, 1979.
Carter arrived late Tuesday with his wife, Rosalynn, from Beijing after a weeklong tour of China.
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