Word: belarus
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...else, for example, did South Africa, Brazil and Argentina abandon their nuclear-weapons programs; or Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine return nuclear weapons to Russia after gaining independence; or China decide to sign the CTBT; or India and Pakistan agree, in principle, to do the same...
...assertions ? and a covert CIA operation to back them up ? that Slobodan Milosevic must be removed from power as soon as possible, apparently when isn?t as important as how. Responding to reports that Belgrade opposition leaders are considering options for finding Milosevic political asylum in, say, Iraq or Belarus, Pentagon chief William Cohen sounded like he had never heard of realpolitik. "He is an indicted war criminal," Cohen said in Denmark Friday. "If there is any place where he seeks sanctuary, perhaps I would recommend the Hague." To TIME U.N. correspondent William Dowell, Cohen?s hard line...
...point this summer, I found myself concerned with the deterioration of the ruble of Belarus, a country that didn't even exist during the cold war. According to an article by Michael Wines in the New York Times, the Belarus ruble is commonly called a zaichik, or bunny, because there's a picture of a small hare on the note. Wines' piece included speculation that calling your currency bunny, as if addressing a debutante, might not be the best way to win international respect, even if your economy didn't happen to be a shambles...
That brought to my mind the recent weakness in the Canadian dollar, commonly called a loony, after the loon portrayed on the dollar coin. Coincidence? Or should the economists we send over to advise East European governments be supplanted by some zoologists? What if Belarus replaced the bunny with a silverback gorilla or a cougar? But does Belarus have any silverback-gorilla habitat? Suddenly, I threw down the paper. Since when did I have to start worrying about the stability of the Belarus bunny...
...diplomatic storm raised by the incident might not be of primary concern to Lukashenko. TIME correspondent Yuri Zarakovich reports that the authoritarian president has restored a Soviet-style command economy, and last April responded to a fall in the Belarus ruble by firing and jailing dozens of officials. With Lukashenko citing Hitler's stewardship of Germany as a role model for his presidency, it's fair to assume that diplomatic protocol is not his priority...