WORLD : Gorbachev Economic Skill ‘Weak’

BRUSSELS — President Bush and other NATO leaders believe that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev has little grasp of Western-style economics, and some doubt that he can restructure his country’s woeful economy, alliance diplomats said today.

“He (Gorbachev) is very weak in economic understanding and abysmal in his understanding of a market economy,” Bush told NATO heads of government in Brussels on Monday, according to verbatim notes of the meeting made available to Reuters by diplomats.

Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who met Gorbachev in Moscow last month, was even blunter at the Brussels meeting.

“His economy is in such god-awful shape, it would take the treasuries of everyone around the table to fix it--and then some,” Mulroney said, according to the notes.