*Consider the calendar of that fateful year which led up to the Peace of Paris. After Gorbachev accepted the Hungarian government's decision to allow independent political parties (February 1989) and the Polish roundtable agreement (April), Bush responded in May by stating that it was “time to move beyond containment” and to “seek the integration of the Soviet Union into the community of nations.” He set, as a precondition for this integration, “a significant shift in the Soviet Union” and a “lightening-up on the control in Eastern Europe [that would allow those states] to move down the democratic path.” In July, Bush secretly invited Gorbachev to meet in December—in advance of the scheduled summit planned for March. Gorbachev responded with alacrity and publicly acclaimed the invitation to “join the community of nations” by sending a letter to the members of the G-7 meeting at Paris. On September 21 – 23, Baker and Shevardnadze met at Baker's ranch in Wyoming and released a detailed joint statement covering the full range of U.S.–Soviet issues. On December 2–3 – 3 Bush and Baker, Gorbachev, and Shevardnadze met on shipboard for a wide-ranging discussion. The Americans proposed negotiating a trade agreement that would lift the restrictions on most favored nation status for the Soviet Union.