Nation: Summit on Cannibal island

The West's Big Four join forces at "somewhat of a social affair"

Conferences in a thatched-roof cabana on a white sand tropical beach; neither fixed agenda nor formal briefings; swimming and sunbathing amid purple bougainvillaea and orange hibiscus. This was the new look of summitry as Jimmy Carter met for two days last week on the fashionable resort island of Guadeloupe—a spot that Christopher Columbus originally named Cannibal Island—with French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, British Prime Minister James Callaghan and West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. But the informal and even sybaritic setting of the...