Fidel Castro scored as the novelty guest. He’d missed this annual meeting since 1979. “It was a little like looking up from your desk and finding Mao Zedong or Nikita Khrushchev standing in the doorway,” observed The New York Times after one of Castro’s visits to news-media headquarters. Wearing a suit, Castro won the biggest round of applause of any speaker in the Assembly; in fatigues, he wowed radicals in Harlem. He also huddled with business leaders, but few seemed likely to go to bat for him. Corporate interest in Cuba, said an administration source, has “gone from 1 to 2 on a scale of 10.”
Yasir Arafat got headlines not for his novelty value (with two White House visits behind him, that has diminished) but as a handy target for New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The mayor had the former guerrilla leader kicked out of a concert at Lincoln Center; some Jewish groups applauded, but the Clinton administration called it a cheap shot. Arafat also provided the scoop of the week-the New York Post’s interview with the man who made him up for an appearance on MTV. “I really wanted to blow his hair out, do something with it, like braids maybe, but he insisted on keeping that turban on,” said the stylist.
Boris Yeltsin jabbed at the press. The Chinese moved their meeting with Clinton from the New York Public Library because of a human-rights exhibit. The Filipino president’s wife went shopping for shoes. It was all in a weekend’s work for party goers who expect to be invited back.
