ACCESSION NUMBER:242997
FILE ID:EUR207
DATE:09/15/92
TITLE:U.S. INVOLVEMENT NEEDED IN CENTRAL, EASTERN EUROPE (09/15/92)
TEXT:*92091507.EUR
*EUR207   09/15/92 *

U.S. INVOLVEMENT NEEDED IN CENTRAL, EASTERN EUROPE
(Georgetown University roundtable talk)  (700)
By Jim Shevis
USIA Staff Writer
Washington -- U.S. and European participants in a September 14 academic
roundtable conference on relations between the United States and the
countries of eastern and central Europe agreed that the United States needs
to stay involved in the region.

Madelyn Allbright, a former National Security Council staff member during
the Carter administration, said she would like to see the United States
assist more in the evolution of central and eastern Europe.

"It has been fascinating to see the changes that have taken place there,"
said Allbright, a Georgetown University professor of international affairs.

One of five experts on the region from Washington universities and research
organizations who participated in the talks, Allbright said the end of the
Cold War was "clearly an event that people in the West had hoped for but we
were unprepared for it....Problems of ethnic division are very troublesome
as seen from the American perspective."

Susan Woodward, a senior research fellow at the Brookings Institution,
agreed with Allbright that the United States was unprepared for the end of
the Cold War.  "We put so much into winning it, but not enough into what we
would do afterwards," she said.

Ilyia Preizel, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies, said that as a member of the North American Treaty
Organization (NATO), if for no other reason, the United States cannot
afford to ignore the region.

"Without NATO the whole structure of Europe will disintegrate, and bring
about a renationalization of security policies," Preizel said.  "Only if
NATO expands its role as a guarantor of security can it survive."

The conference, which took place at Georgetown University, was part of a
week-long program for 21 young policymakers, diplomats, academicians,
researchers, analysts and journalists from central and eastern Europe.

Sponsored by the Aspen Institute Berlin, in cooperation with the Chicago
Council on Foreign Relations, the program consists of a series of meetings
aimed at making Americans more aware of the needs and concerns of Europeans
as both sides discuss the critical issues confronting them.

1he Aspen Institute Berlin is a non-profit, non-partisan, international
affiliate of the Aspen Institute in the USA.  It is supported financially
by the City of Berlin, private foundations and firms, the Aspen Institute
in the USA, and private contributions.

John Hardt, assistant director of Congressional Research Service and a
specialist in eastern European economics, said that the region's move
toward currency stabilization is exemplary but that more needs to be done
to transform the formerly socialistic economies into market economies.

"Most Western observers say you should add restructuring of the economy to
currency stabilization, and deal with matters of production, real income
and jobs," Hardt said.

Countries in the region also need to do more to attract foreign investors
and open up markets, he said.  "The transforming economies must have more
access to markets," he said.

A major problem for the region is how to deal with the loss of the Russian
and Ukrainian markets, Hardt observed.  "The best solution would be for the
Russians to sell more oil and gas in exchange for machinery and textiles,"
he said.

Sharon Wolchik, director of Russian and East European programs at George
Washington University, said that "politically a number of pressures are
building" in the United States for a reassessment of U.S. policy toward
central and eastern Europe.

Mostly, the policy reassessment has to do with how U.S. assistance to the
region can be better coordinated and more effectively delivered, she said.

Bogdan J. Goralczyk, first secretary of the Polish embassy in Budapest, made
the point that "transformation (of the region) is not over yet.  We still
have economic problems; there is no growth.  What we need is interregional
cooperation and integration.  We also need an American involvement; we need
American cooperation, and we need American understanding."

The Europeans left Washington September 15 for Chicago, where they will meet
with business leaders, particularly those engaged in international trade,
and various ethnic groups.

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