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December the 3rd, 1989 was the day the Cold War ended...officially, and the unlikely venue
was the tiny island of Malta in the Mediterranean. Leaders of the two superpowers had agreed
to meet there to finalise the details of agreements that would revolutionise relations between
them. President Bush had come to Malta with a whole
range of proposals and agreements to be signed by President Gorbachev on board the "Maxim
Gorky" cruise ship. Mind you it was hardly cruising weather at the time. Not that it
worried the President. US President George Bush: "Hell no! Hell no!
The Summit's going just fine thank you." Mr Bush had to endure a hazardous trip from
his ship to theirs. It gave his security people something of a fright.
When they finally got together, the two sides agreed to halve their strategic nuclear weapons,
reduce conventional forces in Europe, destroy chemical weapons and President Bush agreed
to end curbs on Soviet trade with the United States. As the bands played on the quay outside,
at the talks, President Bush announced himself quietly satisfied.
US President George Bush: "We have tried to act with the word that President Gorbachev
has used and that is with caution, not to go demonstrating on top of the Berlin Wall
to show how happy we are about the change." Soviet President Gorbachev: "I have to say
that I was very pleased by President Bush's realism and his desire to understand the deep
changes now taking place, to talk to us about them and to work on an approach to these changes.
The meeting surpassed my expectations." Maltese fireworks celebrated the start of
a new era in superpower relations.