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BY JOHN Mcelhenny. Associated Press.
The Miami
Herald, October 21, 2002.
BOSTON - Caroline Kennedy and Sergei Khrushchev met at the John F. Kennedy
Library 40 years after the Cuban Missile Crisis in what organizers called ``the
first meeting between the children of the men who in 1962 saved the world from a
nuclear world war.''
Their fathers, President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev, were at the center of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a moment historians
believe was the closest the world has come to nuclear war.
''It was quite emotional to realize that when our fathers transformed the
hours of danger into the beginnings of a process for peace,'' Caroline Kennedy
said. ``They did it for us and for all children threatened by a world at war.''
The two viewed documents and letters exchanged between their fathers during
the crisis and examined a copy of the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty signed by
their fathers that had been kept by Caroline's mother, Jacqueline Kennedy
Onassis.
They did not speak to the media about their meeting Sunday.
About 850 people attended a forum discussion that included Khrushchev,
former Kennedy advisors Arthur Schlessinger Jr. and Theodore Sorensen, and
Josefina Vidal, first secretary of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington,
the official voice of the Cuban government in the United States.
Sergei Khrushchev said his father decided to send missiles to Cuba because
he felt an obligation to defend it.
Khrushchev compared the defense of Cuba to the American commitment to defend
West Berlin. He said both superpowers needed to assure their allies they were
serious in their commitments.
The crisis began when Kennedy learned that Cuba had Soviet nuclear missiles
capable of reaching the United States. Days later, he ordered a naval blockade
of Cuba.
The crisis ended two weeks later when Khrushchev promised to remove the
nuclear missiles in exchange for a promise by Kennedy not to invade Cuba. The
United States also agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey, a Soviet
neighbor. | 
