Word: pact
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...glance, adding former Warsaw Pact allies of the Soviet Union to the ranks of the triumphant NATO alliance seems a good idea. After all, the argument went, these were the captive nations, now freed, and they deserve the advantages of membership, including the guarantee that an attack on any member will be considered an attack on all of them...
...example, was a renewed effort to save tropical forests. (A previous U.N.-sponsored initiative had fallen apart when it became clear that it actually hastened deforestation.) After Rio, a U.N. working group came up with more than 100 recommendations that have so far gone nowhere. One proposed forestry pact would do little more than immunize wood-exporting nations against trade sanctions...
...Socialists are also calling for changes or additions to the Maastricht Treaty, a document that most experts say cannot be renegotiated. Among the Socialists' conditions for joining the euro are an insistence that Spain and Italy be included (which Germany bitterly resists), the adoption of a pact endorsing measures to boost jobs and growth, and the creation of an "economic government" as a political counterweight to the future European Central Bank...
...crucial test will come next week, when Jospin and Chirac head to Amsterdam for the European Summit. There the ministers are due to approve the controversial, German-inspired "stability pact," intended to impose continued budgetary rigor once the euro is launched. But Jospin has denounced the pact as a "super-Maastricht." If he sticks to that position in Amsterdam, the launching of the euro could be delayed or even scuttled...
...fitting, even if only a coincidence, that the new millennium arrives along with a series of momentous European decisions and deadlines. Next month in Madrid a NATO summit meeting will invite at least three former Warsaw Pact members to join the Western alliance in 1999. Next spring the European Union will begin organizing the monetary union for its start in 1999 and open talks with Central and Eastern European countries that want to join...