Word: foreign
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...P.L.O. has been ahead in the battle for world opinion ever since last December when it acknowledged Israel's right to exist while continuing to support Arab uprisings in the West Bank and Gaza. But last week, smack in the middle of a visit to Washington by Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens, Secretary of State James Baker unveiled a series of admittedly "small" confidence-building trade-offs designed to get the antagonists talking. The Palestinians are being asked to moderate the intifadeh in exchange for a looser Israeli grip on the occupied territories...
...imports offered a solution. Stephen Higgins, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, had been alarmed by the increase in foreign imports of semiautomatics: from only 4,000 in 1986, requests jumped to 40,000 in 1987, to 44,000 in 1988. In just the first three months of this year, there were 113,732 requests from foreign importers to bring the weapons into the U.S. Two weeks ago, Higgins supplied William Bennett, the Administration's designated director of national drug policy, with the startling statistics...
...dimensions of the inspection effort are daunting, and have been made even more so by the budget slashes of the Reagan era. The FDA, for example, can assign only 910 staff members -- in contrast to 1,105 in 1977 -- to monitor food, including imports. Some foreign growers easily circumvent the process; produce from Mexico is often trundled across the border at Nogales, Ariz., on the inspector's day off. And the USDA last year fielded only 7,000 inspectors -- down from 10,000 eight years ago -- to examine the carcasses of nearly 120 million cows, pigs and horses...
Outside help is not likely to rescue the country. One of President Alan Garcia Perez's first moves after taking office in 1985 was to reduce payments due on Peru's $14 billion foreign debt. As a result, Peru is virtually cut off from all fresh foreign credits. Last September Garcia imposed a rigorous austerity plan designed to curtail imports, stimulate exports and cancel subsidies. But critics say his efforts are still insufficient to halt Peru's downward slide. And Garcia refuses to make any deal with international banks that would require the country to pay more on its debt...
...longer quite enough. Even that well-oiled machine is wearing down under the same contradictions of Communism that have driven other East bloc economies onto the rocks. Pointing to the increasing scarcity of consumer goods, ten- year waiting lists for East German-made Trabant automobiles and deepening competition in foreign markets from third world producers, a Western diplomat in Berlin says, "They are treading water. Everything is getting pretty waterlogged...