Word: diplomatic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...breakthrough. But neither had anything collapsed. "There is no crisis," insisted a senior Egyptian diplomat, "but there are complications...
...there seems to be no guiding strategy from the top. A diplomat tells this story about how the first changes came about. When the Communist Party realized the situation was desperate, it put out a call for advice. One plan proposed some 40 or 50 steps the government needed to take incrementally, beginning with putting food on the table. Then it moved on to reforms of various kinds and, finally, far down the list, to legalizing dollars. Fidel pointed to the dollar measure and said, We will start here...
...consensus says Castro is being forced to legitimize what the Cuban people are doing illicitly. "I think people push, and he eventually accedes," says a Western diplomat. "I don't see any fundamental decision by Fidel to change his ways of thinking." A foreign businessman exploring joint ventures is certain that Castro is simply showing the pragmatism of a smart politician: "He's not doing any of this because he likes it but because he will do whatever he has to do to survive...
...Fidel's system needs only modest tinkering. A grizzled mine worker warns against any changes that bring back inequality. Reporters are invited into the country, but top officials decline interviews: they no longer seem to know what the party line is. "There is a new incoherence," says a Western diplomat in Havana. "It's not pluralism, but different people have different ideas about where the country should...
...vast majority of the population," says a Western diplomat, "is sitting and waiting until the situation is resolved for them." In the streets of Havana there is little proto-capitalist bustle. The government says 86,000 people out of Cuba's 11 million have applied for the required license, but it is not easy to find the new mom-and-pop enterprises. Canadian mining executive Bill McGuinty thinks his Cuban co-workers are eager to learn capitalist ways -- up to a point. They are shocked by his attempts to bypass bureaucracy and befuddled by the quid pro quos of networking...