CIA-RDP96-00789R002000670002-5

Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00789R002000670002-5
post
21/09/001
V·
M
MARGARET THATCHER
... Western Europe's senior leader
Thatcher Sees
Enhanced Role
In Moscow Visit
By Karen De Young
Washington Post Foreign Service
LONDON, March 22-When she
goes to Moscow to meet Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev this
week, Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher told a Conservative Party
gathering yesterday, her "goal will
be a peace based not on illusion or
surrender, but on realism and
strength."
Thatcher has publicly rejected
:speculation that she will undertake
mnegotiations for the West on crucial
arms control issues during her five-
day Soviet visit that begins Satur-
day. That role, she has emphasized,
belongs exclusively to the United
States.
But the British news media, with
encouragement from Thatcher's
Downing Street press office, is por-
traying the trip as evidence of her
"big league" status in the western
alliance. Her aides predict it will
enhance Thatcher's already favor-
able prospects in general elections
ikely to be held here this year.
Thatcher and her aides also view
the visit in a larger context, how-
ever. With Moscow and Washington
struggling with domestic issues as
hey move closer to an agreement
on nuclear missiles in Europe, and
Western Europe fearing that the
United States may back away from
ts commitment to the alliance, the
rip may provide her with an oppor-
See THATCHER, A15, Col. 1
----
New Md. Stadium
Wouldn't Guarantee
Economic Gains
By Gwen Ifill
Washington Post Staff Writer
ANNAPOLIS-The Colts deserted Baltimore
and its 37-year-old Memorial Stadium in 1984,
abandoning the legendary playing field of Johnny
Unitas for the glistening new $80 million Indi-
anapolis Hoosierdome.
Indianapolis Mayor Richard Hudnut was de-
lighted; William Donald Schaefer, the mayor of
Baltimore, was not.
Schaefer, now governor, is still bitter about
the Colts' departure. And, like the chief execu-
tives of at least 16 other states and cities, Schae-
fer is convinced that an expensive new sports
facility is necessary as a boon to economic de-
velopment, to boost prestige and to attract a new
National Football League team.
"You look at the prestige, you look at the jobs,
you look at the things it generates in a city,"
Schaefer said last month. "You won't be able to
replace them, and once they are gone, they are
gone,"
"This is one of the most important economic
benefits to the state," Schaefer sad more recent-
ly. "There isn't any question about it."
But there is still debate in cities around the
country as well as among economists about how
strong a link there is between sports-related de-
velopment and economic prosperity. Cost over-
runs for stadium projects are not incommon, and
taxpayers have frequently railed against efforts
to use public funds to build the sports complexes
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans is one
example of a stadium that spun off economic
benefits despite cost overruns during construction.
that team owners are more frequently demand-
ing.
It is the intangible-community spirit and
team identity, for instance-that is most fre-
quently cited as the best reason the public should
subsidize professional sports.
"The name of Indianapolis and the Indianapolis
Colts are going out across the country every day
during the football season," Lee Fehrenkamp,
the Hoosierdome's director of operations, said
recently, summing up the city's transformation
since the Colts arrived there. "These are things
you can't buy, right?"
Schaefer, fearful of losing the Orioles baseball
team, is bent on convincing the General Assem-
bly that the state is responsible for rescuing
Maryland's sports reputation and enhancing its
economic development profile. He has submitted
See STADIUM, A7, Col. 1
011
1
Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00789R002000670002-5
MONDAY, MARCH 23, 1987