Political Quotes

“I am looking forward to the consultations that Secretary Baker will have with Mr. Bessmertnykh. Mr. Bessmertnykh knows the United States very well and he knows the difficulties that we have with any use of force in the Baltics. And so I would stop it right there, John [John Cochran, NBC News]. I am not going to go into some hypothesis that some aide may have discussed with you or anybody else. We're going to see how this plays out. And we have an arms control agenda that I want to see fulfilled, but whether it would be ready in time for the meeting that is now scheduled, I don't know. We're having some difficulties there, frankly. And I expect Jim Baker will be discussing these difficulties. We have some problems, obviously, on the Baltic States. We have a lot of common ground still with the Soviet Union. It is a country that has been strongly supportive of our objectives in the Persian Gulf. And we have an agenda that Baker and Bessmertnykh will talk about, and then I look forward to seeing Mr. Bessmertnykh, and then I'd be in a better position to respond definitively to your question.”