The Nation - News from Oct. 12, 1987

The United States should use trade policy to help Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s domestic policy reforms, former presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale said. Mondale said the Carter Administration used such a course to help Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping carry out his economic reform program. But John Whitehead, the deputy secretary of state, said that while those things might be done in time the United States should first “extract a price,” insisting that the Soviet Union end human rights abuses, remove its forces from Afghanistan and abandon attempts to promote the spread of communist rule in Central America. The two engaged in a politely worded debate at the conclusion of a weekend conference at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., held to examine how the United States and its Western allies might best respond to the challenge of the Gorbachev “new ideas” agenda.