Word: easterners
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Soviet tanks were on the move in Eastern Europe last week -- and on the minds of the Western defense ministers who were in Brussels to discuss NATO's next dilemma: whether and when to modernize the alliance's remaining nuclear weapons. Some of the armored divisions rumbling through East Germany and Hungary were heading for assembly stations in preparation to go home, making good on Mikhail Gorbachev's promise last December to remove 50,000 troops, 5,000 tanks and other conventional arms from Eastern Europe...
Both men have good reason to stay the course. Two weeks before the encounter, representatives of the government and Solidarity had signed an accord that paved the way for the legalization of the previously outlawed trade union and moved the country one step closer to what may become Eastern Europe's first multiparty system. Last week Solidarity backed a preliminary slate of twelve candidates, including a film idol, a schoolteacher and a former political prisoner, to run in the parliamentary elections scheduled for June. If successful, Poland's experiment could set an example to be followed by other reform-minded...
Despite those generous words, however, Washington's aid is largely symbolic and does not signal a new, comprehensive policy toward Eastern Europe. For example, Bush promised to push for reduced import duties on certain Polish products, but the goods covered under the President's pledge amount to as little as $3.5 million out of a total of more than $400 million in Polish exports to the U.S. And loans of some $500 million from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have yet to be approved...
...large a check should the U.S. write as a reward for reforms in Eastern Europe? Should it write one at all? The Administration's largesse is limited by its own budget deficits. More important, Bush advisers are wary of applauding reforms that may turn out to be more mirage than reality. "Poland has serious structural economic problems," observes a senior Administration official. "The money it has previously borrowed from the West has been used very poorly." Unless the Poles revamp their economic system, says the official, "it's going to be money down the drain...
...will the authorities go in clamping down on the demonstrators? -- As Soviet tanks prepare to move out of Eastern Europe, NATO decides not to decide on revamping its arsenal. -- Should the U.S. bail out Poland's Communists? -- France's bicentennial hoopla extols the glories of the French Revolution -- but battle lines drawn in 1789 still have not disappeared...