Word: arabized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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B.C.C.I. was started in 1972 with the putative mission of becoming the Muslim world's first banking powerhouse. Though it was incorporated in Luxembourg and headquartered in London, had more than 400 branches and subsidiaries around the world and was nominally owned by Arab shareholders from the gulf countries, B.C.C.I. was always a Pakistani bank, with its heart in Karachi. Agha Hasan Abedi, the bank's founder and leader until his ouster last year, is a Pakistani, as are most of the bank's former middle managers. And it was in Pakistan that the bank's most prodigiously corrupt division...
...criminal enterprise whose activities ranged from laundering drug money to financing clandestine arms sales? Authorities seemed content for years to ignore mounting evidence, provided by private audits and former B.C.C.I. officers, of the bank's misdeeds. According to leaked audit reports, B.C.C.I. used deposits to enrich many of its Arab investors -- and then covered up the fraudulent transactions. The bank also cultivated a global network of political contacts to help keep regulators at bay. The heavy hitters included former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, since 1982 chairman of Washington's First American Bankshares, which B.C.C.I. secretly gained control...
...have been as positive as we could be. Essentially we are agreed that there should be two tracks -- one a Palestinian-Israeli track, the other an Arab-Israeli track -- and that they should meet at the end. We certainly favor a Palestinian delegation chosen by the Palestinian people, because you can't have people representing them except those of their own choice. However, if there is a problem there and it can be overcome only by providing an umbrella of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, then we will do that based on talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization and with...
Even France's famous "civilizing mission" to the rest of the world has come under question. French policy toward the Arab countries, supposedly an example of Paris' understanding approach to Third World aspirations, sank practically without a trace in the quicksand of the gulf crisis. Says Gilles Martinet, an ex-ambassador with close links to the Socialists: "For most of our statesmen, whether they belonged to the left or the right, France was always strong, feared, respected, admired and envied -- until the gulf war taught us otherwise...
Though the fiction of a singularly influential and enlightened French "Arab policy" was exploded in the gulf, the result has been a more realistic, selective outreach across the Mediterranean. Mitterrand and Foreign Minister Roland Dumas are now concentrating attention on their Maghreb neighbors. In many French eyes, the North African lands that were once colonial possessions are a time bomb. Arab immigrants have for the most part rejected assimilation, and in future years may become a heavier challenge to the concept of what it means to be French. Surprisingly, residents of foreign origin constitute no greater a share...