The Etchings of Friendship

By John S. DeMott.

From the day he took office, Ronald Reagan refused to acknowledge that man- made pollutants cause acid rain. In 1980, he went so far as to say that acid rain was caused by trees. In a St. Patrick's Day meeting a year ago in Quebec City with Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, the President rejected requests from his fellow Irishman for U.S. action. But last week in Washington, during his second "shamrock summit" with Mulroney, Reagan changed his tune. Acid rain, said he, "is a serious concern affecting both our countries."

This belated recognition came as the President endorsed a January report on acid rain by Drew Lewis, former U.S. Transportation Secretary, and William Davis, former Ontario premier. Their investigation diplomatically divided responsibility for the problem between the two nations, but recommended that the U.S. take bigger steps toward a cleanup: a $5 billion, five-year effort, with costs split by the Government and business, to develop technology for burning coal more cleanly. The huge quantity of coal burned by the industrial and electrical plants of the Ohio Valley is a major source of airborne sulfur oxides that return to earth as acid compounds.

Although the President resisted the report's scientific evidence for more than two months, he was finally forced into his new position by Mulroney's political problems. The Prime Minister has been under enormous pressure to win U.S. cooperation in reducing acid rain, and he was so enthusiastic about making even modest progress that he tripped over his own words when talking about it last week. Acid rain, said Mulroney in language worthy of Yogi Berra, is a problem "that is not going to go away until it's solved."

The White House was vague about where money would be found to carry out the Lewis-Davis report's recommendations, or how the Midwest's beleaguered smokestack industries could be induced to pay their share. Still, Mulroney could claim symbolic achievement in getting Reagan to come down out of the clouds--and trees--on the problem. Before Reagan's turnabout, as Canada's Ambassador to the U.S. Allan Gotlieb put it, "acid rain was dead in the water, just like the fish."

Unfortunately, news of Mulroney's success was all but overshadowed back home by some undiplomatic behavior at a diplomatic do. As a party honoring Vice President George Bush was getting under way at the Canadian embassy, Sondra Gotlieb, the Ambassador's wife, slapped her social secretary, Connie Connor. A dozen guests and members of the Canadian press corps looked on aghast. Washington was stunned by the uncharacteristic gaffe; the Gotliebs are considered one of the most popular and able diplomatic couples in the U.S. capital. The slap was apparently the result of tension over an important guest who did not arrive and of Sondra Gotlieb's belief that Connor had not informed her of the situation. For Gotlieb, a novelist who writes a witty column for the Washington Post satirizing the capital's social scene, it was a mortifying moment. Among her frequent topics: protocol at official events.

With reporting by Peter Stoler/Washington