Word: leader
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...relieved that the U.S. is determined to remain a European power. Worry is widespread in both Bonn and East Berlin that East Germans' mounting anger at the Communist regime, coupled with emotional longings for "one German * fatherland," could result in violent demonstrations that would paralyze the government. The new leader of the East German Communist Party, Gregor Gysi, last week appealed to the U.S. to play a vigorous role in Europe, mostly to dampen West German pressure for absorbing his country...
Meanwhile, demonstrations in Bulgaria showed both the importance of updating the Atlantic alliance and the difficulty of drafting plans in the face of swiftly moving events. Continuing its plunge into reform, the Bulgarian Communist Party last week expelled Todor Zhivkov, its leader for 35 years, and announced that free elections would be held in May. When the parliament postponed until January a vote on ending the Communist Party's monopoly of power, 50,000 jeering protesters encircled the parliament building. As Josef Joffe, foreign editor of the Suddeutsche Zeitung, observed, "If only there weren't all these people...
...there. By contrast, this year's revolutionaries have had the tacit blessing, and sometimes the explicit encouragement, of the Czar's successor as the most powerful man in Russia, Mikhail Gorbachev. By what he has done -- and, perhaps more important, by what he has refrained from doing -- the Soviet leader has made possible the astonishing events of this year...
...Washington, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater denounced the policy as "unacceptable until conditions in Viet Nam improve." In London, opposition Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock assailed the move as a "shameful episode," accusing Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of acting ! "tyrannically." Thatcher denounced Kinnock's criticism as "feeble and nonsense" and, in a swipe at the U.S., noted acidly that "those countries protesting about repatriation would do far better to take some of the boat people themselves." While the U.S., Canada, Australia and France have all taken many boat people in the past, none have offered shelter to those now facing...
...former President P.W. Botha, for a historic face-to-face meeting. Mandela has since received a series of visitors at the Victor Verster Prison Farm, where he is serving his 26th year of a life sentence for plotting to overthrow white rule. Most of his powwows have been with leaders of rival antigovernment groups. But last week Mandela, 71, a leader of the banned African National Congress (A.N.C.), traveled under escort 30 miles to Cape Town for his first meeting with Botha's successor, President F.W. de Klerk. By granting his request for a meeting, De Klerk signaled that Mandela...