Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was at the White House on this date in 1989 where he gave President George H.W. Bush and senior members of his Administration an in-person briefing about his recently concluded talks with Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow.
Bush, who would depart for Malta the following day for his first talks with the Soviet leader since becoming President, had requested the briefing from Canada’s Prime Minister.
Diplomats from Canada’s Embassy in D.C. later filed a report on the Bush-Mulroney discussions. “The President, Secretary Baker, and the others were extraordinarily attentive throughout, genuinely curious about several assessments, and most emphatic about Soviet actions with Cuba,” it read.
“The meeting was exceptional for several reasons: It was the fifth bilateral between the PM and the President this year; it has been requested by the President; and the Prime Minister’s impressions, assessments, and recommendations dominated the discussions …. The Prime Minister appealed strongly to the President, as leader of the Alliance, to be guided by his own gut instinct but to seize the historic moment and extend a hand to President Gorbachev, especially on arms control.”[caption id="attachment_1576750" align="alignleft" width="341"]
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and President George H.W. Bush[/caption]Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.