Word: french
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Washington Gossip Columnist Betty Beale, who holds the equivalent of a black belt in the sport, spotted her opportunity. Noting that Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was about to wind up a chat with Attorney General William French Smith at the Swedish Ambassador's Christmas party, Beale swooped past the hors d'oeuvre table, greeted O'Connor and guided her skillfully to a brocade couch. She had reached safe territory. Even though the pair was surrounded by some 200 other guests, no one would have dreamed of interrupting a sit-down...
...whole of the country." Party Secretary Lionel Jospin was quick to reply next morning. He was shocked, he said, that "a member of the government would speak to the discredit of his own Cabinet." Said Jospin: "I agree that we must listen to the voice of the French people, but let us not forget the principles of Socialism, the importance of class differences, and the fact that we belong to the left...
Neither the party nor the country has been able to digest easily Mitterrand's switch in June 1982, from a big-spending economic policy to the current tough austerity program that has reduced inflation to 7% while leaving a record 10.1% French workers unemployed. To many left-wing voters, Mitterrand's about-face seemed a betrayal of Socialist promises and ideals, and was all the more bewildering because the government continued to maintain that its fundamental goals remained unchanged. At the party convention, the debate raged over whether the Socialists should, for example, continue to stress traditional themes...
...President's attempt to negotiate with Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi for the withdrawal of Libyan troops from Chad led to a fiasco that has hurt Mitterrand's credibility in the one field where his competence had gone virtually unquestioned. After the French withdrew 3,000 paratroopers from Chad between last September and November, Mitterrand discovered that, contrary to the agreement with Gaddafi, a substantial number of Libyan troops remained. A chagrined President was forced to fly to Crete to confront Gaddafi, a move that was denounced by former Premier Maurice Couve de Murville as "the greatest humiliation that...
...liquidation of Creusot-Loire, France's largest privately owned engineering conglomerate. The group's companies, which had amassed losses of more than $220 million in the past two years, had run up debts of more than $633 million. The failure was the biggest industrial bankruptcy in French history...