THE PRESIDENT IN EUROPE : Reporter’s Notebook : Buchanan Issue a New Distraction for Reagan

BONN — Nettlesome problems in Washington have a way of following a President wherever he goes and sometimes distracting from larger issues--even if these are the weighty matters of arms control and trade negotiations that President Reagan and six other heads of state have been discussing here.

As Reagan arrived at the Federal Chancellery on Saturday for the economic summit’s final session, a reporter shouted a question about a news story concerning White House Communications Director Patrick J. Buchanan’s having allegedly jotted down notes about “succumbing to pressure of the Jews” during a White House meeting with Jewish leaders on Reagan’s Bitburg cemetery visit.

“Is Buchanan in hot water today for his remark about Jewish pressure?”

Reagan hesitated, then said, “No, because the way it was portrayed in public--to the public--was completely false. He was charged with something he hadn’t done.”

Reagan was then asked about his efforts to get a new round of global trade talks started, but West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl led him into the building before he could respond.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz was also asked to comment on the Buchanan affair during a summit briefing here. He responded in a more light-hearted vein about the former columnist and TV commentator.

“Well, he’s a fine person. I used to watch him on TV all the time. I don’t know enough about the controversy--I know enough about the controversy to know that I don’t know enough about the controversy--I know enough about the controversy to know that I don’t want to get into it.”

The briefing broke up in laughter and Shultz walked out smiling.

While Nancy Reagan was in Rome last week, the hot topic in American social circles there was the gentlemanly competition between Maxwell M. Rabb, the U.S. ambassador to Italy, and William A. Wilson, ambassador to the Vatican, for snippets of the First Lady’s free social time.

When the smoke cleared, Rabb hosted a dinner party in her honor for more than 60 people Friday night, while Wilson settled for a more intimate luncheon Saturday after the First Lady’s audience with Pope John Paul II.

Rabb’s party drew such jet setters as film director Federico Fellini, Sophia Loren, fashion designer Valentino Garavani, Gregory Peck and the Aga Khan. Nancy Reagan’s chief of staff, James Rosebush, was charmed to find himself sitting next to Gina Lollobrigida, who wore a gown with a plunging neckline.

“I called my wife before I went to the party,” Rosebush said.

Valentino, as he is known, issued a press release listing the women who wore his fashions at the party.

Wilson’s lunch drew Audrey Hepburn.

Julius Bengtsson, the First Lady’s hairdresser, was thrilled to be part of the entourage of 15 who met the Pope after the First Lady’s audience. “I’m not usually nervous,” Bengtsson said, “but my knees were shaking.”

Mrs. Reagan left her purse and gloves on the Pope’s desk, but an alert Vatican aide spotted them and brought them out to her.

An estimated 10,000 police were on duty in Bonn for the summit, making the usually sleepy German capital appear to be something of an armed camp and giving it a ratio of one policeman for every 30 citizens.

Airspace over Bonn and the Gymnich Castle north of the city, where Reagan is staying, has been declared out of bounds for all private aircraft. The castle is being guarded by a specially trained anti-terrorist unit of the West German military. Even boat traffic on the nearby Rhine River, Europe’s busiest waterway, was affected by security measures.

The large grass field in front of the picturesque Friedrick Wilhelm University in Bonn has for years served as a giant soapbox for causes of all kinds. In 1983, more than 250,000 people gathered there to demonstrate against deployment of U.S.-made nuclear missiles.

Incidents of violence were virtually nonexistent, but last year city fathers decided that demonstrations should be held elsewhere and that the field be exclusively used as a recreation area.

On Saturday, when about 7,000 demonstrators, protesting the economic summit, were told to hold their rally in a central city square, the resulting violence left 35 demonstrators behind bars, numerous police officers injured and all windows of a major department store on the square broken.

When word went out that the 17th-Century castle where President Reagan stayed during the summit is owned by a man claiming to be Adolf Hitler’s godson, it became an embarrassment for the President.

Then, West German government spokesman Peter Boenisch tried to salvage the situation by declaring that the castle had been de-Nazified by the presence of a previous state visitor--the late Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev, who stayed in the castle twice, in 1978 and 1981.

Notebook contributors were Betty Cuniberti, Tyler Marshall and Jack Nelson.