Word: accordant
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Remember the "indispensable nation"? That was Madeleine Albright's catchphrase for the U.S. role in international affairs. Yet Monday's decision by the nations of the industrialized and developing world to adopt the Kyoto Accord - despite its rejection by Washington - may be a sign that the Home of the Brave is in danger of growing dispensable...
...course, the revised Kyoto Accord hammered out in three days of intense negotiations in Bonn is but a shadow of its former self. It has reduced the average cut in greenhouse gas emissions required by the year 2012 from 5.2 percent below 1990 levels to 1.8 percent below 1990 levels, and has incorporated a number of the negotiating positions previously advanced by the Clinton administration, such as crediting nations for maintaining large forests to serve as "carbon sinks" to soak up the offending gas. (And all this in response not to pressure from Washington, which had removed itself from...
...real significance of the revised Kyoto Accord lies less in its impact on the planet's climate than in the fact that it survived Washington's withdrawal. The determination of the nations of the industrialized world to hang in and negotiate a binding treaty even after it had been nixed by the "indispensable nation" suggests that we may have entered a new era in international affairs. And that it will be an era in which the U.S. will no longer be automatically granted the leadership role among Western nations it established during the Cold...
...problems that threaten to scuttle the deal altogether. With the U.S. definitely not on board, and Japan threatening to leave as well, there is tremendous pressure to get enough nations together to adopt some version of the treaty designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If Japan withdraws support, the accord?s days may be numbered, and hope isn?t high among delegates that there will be an agreement this time around...
...current talks being encouraged by the U.S. involve constitutional changes to accord the Albanian minority greater rights in Macedonia. But having so successfully determined the agenda through their insurgency, it takes a substantial leap of faith (and blindness to the region's recent history) to imagine that the hard men in the hills will simply turn in their Kalashnikovs when the lawyers in Skopje have finessed constitutional changes...