Word: arabized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...MILITANT SHI'ITE GROUP HIZBALLAH, DETERmined to do all it can to sabotage ongoing Arab-Israeli peace talks, has scored its best shot in that battle so far. Hizballah operators in Israel's self-declared security zone in southern Lebanon detonated a roadside bomb as an Israeli army convoy passed by on patrol, killing five soldiers. The blast -- and Israel's retaliatory attacks on Hizballah and Palestinian positions in Lebanon -- brought new tensions to the table as Arab and Israeli negotiators conducted their seventh round of talks in Washington...
...Says a senior Bush adviser: "We asked ourselves not whether Saddam was a wonderful human being but whether by sticks and carrots we could encourage him to take a more moderate course." The pro-Baghdad stance, the aides insist, "was a very limited exploration" strongly advocated by other Arab states and U.S. allies...
Administration officials say there was little they would have done differently. The U.S. was giving Iraq agricultural export credits that helped American farmers. Saddam's Arab neighbors and many European countries were advising Washington to be nice to Iraq and would have resisted, out of fear or Arab solidarity, any drive toward containment. The U.S. did not sell arms directly to Iraq. The dual-use equipment sold by the U.S. was not cutting-edge technology but rather more generic items and processes that could have been bought in 10 other countries...
...Saddam never had any interest in Washington's blandishments. U.S. policy was based on the belief that he wanted to reconstruct his country after the exhausting war with Iran and would need access to the West to do so. Instead Saddam resumed an interrupted march toward domination of the Arab world and figured raiding the Kuwaiti piggy bank would be a surer path to riches than borrowing from the West...
...maintain the signal was meant to stop any aggression, but by then Saddam needed a stick with the heft of a two-by-four: a direct warning of U.S. military intervention. Even so bald a threat might not have deterred him, but it was never issued. American, European and Arab leaders just did not believe he would invade and had not begun to contemplate what they would do in response...