Preparing the Houston Summit
These failures presented those preparing the Houston Summit
with an unusually large challenge, which they moved to meet with
determination and innovation. At their first meeting held in Key
West, Florida in January 1990, the personal representatives of
the Heads (known in Summit parlance as "sherpas") reoriented the
forthcoming Summit from that forum's standard focus on
macroeconomic policy coordination, microeconomic adjustment, and
North-South relations, to focus centrally on the new challenges
of East-West relations, agricultural trade, and global
environmental protection. At the second sherpa meeting, held in
San Francisco, the Heads' political directors assembled four
months earlier than usual to review thoroughly the novel
political and security situation unfolding in Europe and
integrate their conclusions into the main Summit preparatory
process. By the third meeting, in Paris, attention turned to the
deep divisions between an impatient United States and a reluctant
European Community on eliminating agricultural subsidies, and
between an entrenched United States and its enthusiastic Summit
colleagues over far-reaching action to protect the world's
atmosphere. And by the fourth and fifth sherpa meetings, held in
Newport and New York (the latter eight days before the opening of
the Summit), the specific issue of providing aid to the Soviet
Union, left unresolved by earlier NATO and EC summits, was taken
up by the seven-power Summit as a priority concern.