30 years ago

Bush and Gorbachev at the Malta summit in 1989

30 years ago, a historical summit was held in Malta between US President George H. W. Bush and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, taking place on December 2–3, 1989, just a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was their second meeting following a meeting that included Ronald Reagan in New York in December 1988. During the summit, Bush and Gorbachev would declare an end to the Cold War. News reports of the time referred to the Malta Summit as the most important since 1945, when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed on a post-war plan for Europe at the Yalta Conference. Of course I was still in New York at that time, and I followed eagerly the reports of the US TV and newspapers, keeing a lot of clippings from those days. 

The commemorative coin issued on the anniversary of the Malta 1989 summit.

This was before the Internet came around, but I was able to enjoy a lot of footage on Malta, which were filmed in the days leading to the summit. Unfortunately, the weather was very stormy during those 2 days, and the official meeting was done on the Russian ship berthed at Marsaxlokk harbor, with huge waves and terrible winds which put a damper on an otherwise historic milestone for the Maltese Islands. Nonetheless Malta got not only its 15 minutes of fame, but rather an extended 15 days of fame and TV and media coverage.