OCTOBER 1982
DSR 11C
ANNOX D
COPY NO
ANGLO-GERMAN SUMMIT
28-29 OCTOBER 1982
STEERING BRIEF
Brief by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
INTRODUCTION
1.
This Summit, the twelfth in the series of regular
consultations at Head of Government level, will be
Chancellor Kohl's first. It provides us with an excellent
opportunity to establish an early working relationship with
Dr Kohl and his team and to impress on them the importance
we attach to strong Anglo-German relations. We shall clearly
need to use the occasion to bring home to the new Federal
Chancellor the case for a lasting solution to the Community Budget problem, while the Germans are likely to press their ideas for 'new impulses' within the Community. We can expect
the other main themes to be international economic and trade
questions, transatlantic and East/West relations and defence.
2.
ཀ.
Dr Kohl has little experience of international affairs. In the four weeks since he has held the Chancellorship the focus of his attention has been almost entirely domestic - altough he has visited both Paris and London briefly and has already experienced his first Franco-German Summit (21-22
October). His government had a difficult birth. The method
by which it came to power, the 'constructive vote of no confidence' has met with the disapproval of much of the electorate: Herr Schmidt was a popular Chancellor and Herr Genscher is widely blamed for disloyalty to the
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SPD/FDP Coalition.
/3.