Office of the Historian

243. Minutes of a Meeting1

Toronto, June 20, 1988, 10:26 a.m.–12:22 p.m.

SUMMIT PLENARY MEETING

PARTICIPANTS

  • President Reagan
  • Secretary of State George Shultz
  • Secretary of Treasury James A. Baker, III
  • Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (Canada) Chairman
  • Secretary of State for External Affairs Joseph Clark
  • Minister of Finance Michael Wilson
  • Premier of Ontario David Peterson
  • President Francois Mitterrand (France)
  • Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Roland Dumas
  • Minister of State for Economy, Finance & Budget Pierre Beregovoy
  • Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (UK)
  • Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs Sir Geoffrey Howe
  • Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson
  • Chancellor Helmut Kohl (FRG)
  • Vice Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs Hans-Dietrich Genscher
  • Federal Minister of Finance Gerhard Stoltenberg
  • Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita (Japan)
  • Minister of Foreign Affairs Sosuke Uno
  • Minister of Finance Kiichi Miyazawa
  • Prime Minister Ciriaco De Mita (Italy)
  • Minister of Foreign Affairs Giulio Andreotti
  • Minister of the Treasury Giuliano Amato
  • ECC President Jacques Delors (Commission of the European Communities)
  • The Honorable Willy De Clercq, Commission of Foreign Affairs
  • The Honorable Peter M. Schmidhuber, Commission of Monetary Affairs

U.S. NOTETAKER

  • Allen Wallis

[Omitted here is discussion not focused on debt.]

(11:59AM) Debt—Canada initiated idea of Commonwealth Summit.

Kohl—Problems in debtor countries. We must help countries to use aid. Must not allow further environmental devastation with our aid. Must adopt global thinking.

Thatcher—Must give clear statement. Aid loans written off. Paris Club—ask them to negotiate agreements so that options selected lead to fair burden sharing.

(12:08PM) Mulroney—Lunch at 12:30. Next session here 2:30–4:00; then early evening at Hart House.

Wilson—on the debt wording.

(12:09PM) Nothing to add to what Thatcher just said. Paris Club meets July.2 Summit could give impetus.

Baker agrees with Thatcher and Wilson. U.S. aid 97% grants but we cannot forgive principal.3

Stoltenberg—Debt has to be considered in relation to other issues. Our markets need to be open. Conditions for investment must be improved as a precondition.

[Omitted here is discussion of the political statement.]

(12:17PM) Amato—Debt. Relation between reducing debt and development. Italian proposal should be taken account of—combinations, partial cancellation.

[Omitted here is discussion of Haiti.]

(12:22PM) Adjourn.

  1. Source: Reagan Library, Stephen Farrar Files, 1987–1988 International Economic Affairs Directorate Outline File, Summit Toronto 06/23/1988–07/08/1988; NLR–177–5–6–2–2. Confidential. The meeting took place at the Toronto Economic Summit in the main meeting room of the Metro Toronto Convention Center.↩
  2. See Document 245.↩
  3. The Toronto Economic Summit Economic Declaration, issued June 21, declared in its section on “Debt of the Poorest,” that the Heads of State “welcome the action taken by a number of creditor governments to write-off or otherwise remove the burden of ODA loans, and also urge countries to maintain a high grant element in their future assistance to the poorest.” The Heads of State also declared: “The market-oriented, growth-led strategy based on the case-by-case approach remains the only viable approach for overcoming” the external debt problems of highly-indebted middle-income countries. (Department of State, Bureau of Economic Affairs, Office of Economical and Agricultural Affairs Files, Official Economic Summit Files, 1975–1991, Lot 93D490: Toronto Summit—Economic Declaration)↩