Word: blocs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...pact gives the Vatican its first diplomatic toehold within the Soviet bloc.* The breakthrough is one result of a decision by Pope John XXIII in the early 1960s to launch a friendlier policy toward the Communist world. The negotiations that led to last week's recognition of Poland's Communist regime began in 1974. Throughout, Warsaw was far more eager for progress than the church, especially with the election in 1978 of the Polish Pope John Paul II. After Solidarity was outlawed in 1982, the Polish government became desperate for Vatican ties in order to win support among its devoutly...
That may be. However, it is far from certain that other Communist countries in the East bloc with sizable Catholic populations will follow Poland's diplomatic lead. The government of Hungary has restored some religious rights, and Rome has responded warmly, but there are no hints that these moves will be sufficient to forge a new diplomatic relationship with the Vatican. Rome's prospects with the hard-line rulers of Czechoslovakia are far dimmer. In the Soviet Union the enforced illegality of Catholicism in the Ukraine appears to present an intractable barrier. Still, when John Paul was elected Pope...
...Uncle George on a historic dash through Eastern Europe, trying to reach out and touch everyone, striving to bring down to personal terms his doctrine of homegrown political and economic freedoms and what they could mean for the burdened people of the Soviet bloc. He was consumed with the idea that the economic summit, held in Paris during the weekend, ought to give much of its attention to the stirrings in the long-troubled nations of the old empire...
...with the Palestinian question. Now the latest attempt at unity is faltering after seven months, as the country's two major parties bump heads over the future course of a peace plan that calls for elections in the occupied territories. Bowing to pressures from hard-liners within his Likud bloc, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir two weeks ago saddled the proposal with conditions that are anathema to the Palestinians. Labor Party leaders responded last week by voting to quit the government. The move, yet to be ratified by the party's 1,300-member Central Committee, threatens not only to wreck...
...breaking bread with Solidarity and Communist bosses in Warsaw to exhorting students in Budapest, Bush plays a winning hand of personal diplomacy. -- The Paris summit underscores a new reality: European nations, not the U.S., may be more able to guide the West's response to changes in the Communist bloc. -- An errant plane, a crash with a miraculous outcome, a puzzling wound...