Word: bombings
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Another candidate for bomb-in-the-basement status, South Africa, announced in 1970 that it had developed a new process for uranium enrichment. Since then the government in Pretoria has fiercely protected its putative breakthrough from virtually all curious foreign eyes. In 1977 the Soviet Union, apparently acting on evidence received from one of its spy satellites, notified the U.S. of an installation in South Africa's Kalahari Desert that resembled a nuclear test site under construction. Washington used one of its own satellites to inspect further. Four months later, under pressure from the U.S., South Africa stopped work...
Brazil and Argentina are thought to be much further away from bomb-making capacity, but both countries show serious intentions of retaining at least the option for weapons development, even under their recently restored civilian governments. Both also seemingly intend to involve themselves as much as possible in peaceful nuclear commerce, thus extending an expanding web of nuclear relationships...
...became President in 1971 and was overthrown by Zia in 1977. (In 1978 the popular Bhutto was hanged by the Zia government for allegedly conspiring to have a political opponent killed.) Bhutto was obsessed by India's nuclear progress. In 1965 he had declared, "If India builds the Bomb, we will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry. But we will...
...efforts to obtain weapons technology. Washington discounts Indian suspicions of Pakistan's nuclear intentions as part of the long-standing rivalry between those two countries. Says a State Department official: "If you just listen to the Indians, you'd come away with the impression that Pakistan has had the bomb for some years." He notes that the U.S. "would not sit idly by" if Pakistan attained the ability to test a bomb, but does not specify what Washington's actions would be. Nonetheless, says Proliferation Expert Weiss, "we're addressing Pakistan's real security needs, but we didn't extract...
...again was in turmoil. In Beirut, Shi'ite militiamen battled with Palestinians for control of three Palestinian refugee camps on the southern edge of the city, two of them Sabra and Shatila, where the infamous 1982 massacre took place. In the Christian eastern sector of the capital, a car bomb of unexplained origin killed 55 people and wounded 176. In Cairo, in the meantime, the Egyptian government announced that it had narrowly averted the car bombing of a diplomatic mission, presumed to be the U.S. embassy. And in Kuwait late last week, the ruling Emir, Sheik Jaber al Ahmed...