Word: diplomatic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...told visiting Congressman Kemp that he thought the peace accord did not preclude continued U.S. aid to the contras. "Hondurans would really like a regional peace agreement, but they also want to maintain good relations with the U.S., and right now the two seem mutually exclusive," says a Western diplomat in Tegucigalpa. "So they are hanging on to the U.S. trapeze, too frightened to let go and try to catch the Central American trapeze...
Surprisingly, the announcement stirred little notice in Washington. A Western diplomat in Nicaragua speculated that the Soviets had insisted on high-level representation at the anniversary festivities. "It wasn't an invitation, it was a summons," he said. Envoys elsewhere in the region observed that Ortega's announcement followed a Soviet decision to supply Nicaragua with an additional 100,000 tons of badly needed oil this year, and questioned whether recent strains between Moscow and Managua had been anything more than a propaganda ploy...
...Americans, have now gone underground. But in the face of those advances, the man in the Havana street is still unable to speak or travel as he pleases. Money is more than ever in desperately short supply. "Cuba is suffering an economic crisis of massive proportions," says a foreign diplomat. "Here is a country with no free press, no opposition parties, no capital flight, a controlled economy and $4.6 billion from the Soviets each year -- and they're still, in hard-currency terms, almost bankrupt...
With money scarce, and goods even scarcer, a diplomat observes, "crooked deals multiply until they ensure that the economic plan can never work." Some people take photos, fix jalopies or do typing on the side; others simply try to resell the goods they manage to procure. The rampant finagling is only encouraged by a bureaucracy with so many hands that none is likely to know what the others are doing: in a Havana telephone directory, the list of ministries takes up 77 pages...
...officials last year. The documents sparked the controversy over the alleged participation in Nazi war crimes of Kurt Waldheim, the former U.N. Secretary-General who is now President of Austria. Opponents of increased access argue that the archives contain unsubstantiated charges that could harm innocent people. Counters an Israeli diplomat at the U.N.: "Secrecy will hurt, not help, those who might be innocent...