Word: pact
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Desperate to eke out domestic support for a new worldwide trade pact, the Clinton administration withdrew its request for "fast-track" negotiating authority. The move would have forced Congress to approve or deny a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade without amendments and within a specified time. The process is considered crucial to preventing complex trade treaties from being picked apart by special interests: NAFTA, for instance, had been negotiated under the auspices of this process. What caused the Clinton flip-flop? Criticisms from groups representing consumers, as well as complaints from conservatives...
...regain a majority there -- while picking up 25 more seats in the House. Given what the President has already endured in the present Congress, losses of that size would give the opposition make-or- break power in the next one, where battles on welfare reform and the global trade pact await, plus the uncertain second act of health care. The impact of the more powerful G.O.P. presence, declares Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour, will be to "cut Clinton's term in half...
GATT: Last December 117 nations agreed on a plan to revise the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The changes in the global pact would reduce tariffs on manufactured goods, cut agricultural subsidies, tighten the protection of intellectual-property rights and create a new mechanism to mediate future trade disputes. Congress is considering whether to approve U.S. participation in the agreement. Opponents ranging from Pat Buchanan to Ralph Nader warn that the new treaty would require the U.S. to defer to a supranational body on such matters as automobile-emission levels, product warning labels and safety standards. Supporters...
When the first samples of low-grade nuclear material began to leak out of former Warsaw Pact countries in 1991, the German police sent special squads into the field to find them. Since 1991, German police have counted 440 cases of nuclear smuggling, and almost all have been stings. With so many agents posing as buyers, some skeptical officials wonder if they might be creating a demand. "There's no evidence of a real market for plutonium in Germany," says Bremen's chief prosecutor. He wonders whether "our interest in pursuing criminals is bringing danger into Germany...
...Bunch and Midnight Express (the film whose screenplay won Stone his first Oscar) explode on the window of a motel room while the two ( make love and a hostage looks on. As the Cowboy Junkies' ethereal version of Sweet Jane plays on the sound track, they make a blood pact, and the drops form cartoon snakes -- a big motif here...