Word: presummit
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...diplomacy, the well-timed gesture can make all the difference. During presummit haggling, National Security Adviser SANDY BERGER warned his Chinese counterpart, Liu Hua Qui, that the ballooning trade deficit with China, $44 billion this year, was going to provoke a mega-political backlash. Liu replied that the deficit had many complex causes, including wrongheaded U.S. export controls. During a break, a frustrated Berger told an aide to buy a present for Liu. When the Chinese official unwrapped it, he found, instead of the traditional vase, a spanking-new Barbie--made in China, of course. Berger razzed him, "I want...
Most delegates felt that the treaties to be signed were not strong enough, and they blamed the U.S. In presummit meetings, American negotiators -- fearful that the proposed agreements could hurt U.S. economic interests -- insisted that the treaty to combat climate change be weakened, and the White House is refusing to sign the pact to protect endangered plants and animals. But most other nations came ready for action. India, often a holdout in environmental negotiations, agreed to the climate-change treaty, and three countries -- Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands -- pushed for tougher curbs on the gases that may cause global warming...
...questions are more than idle speculation. This week at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, world leaders will be adding their signatures to a treaty to prevent climate change, a document that was significantly weakened during presummit negotiations, in part because of U.S. contentions that the threat of global warming has been overblown. But the Bush Administration's skepticism must contend with the direct experience of millions of citizens who are worried that when the weather gets as odd as it has been of late, something must be wrong...
Much of the debate in presummit meetings centered on the issue of who owns and controls the genetic information stored in those species. Traditionally, the benefits that come from genetic materials -- seeds, specimens or drugs derived from plants and animals -- go to whoever finds a way to exploit them. Vanilla, for example, was a biological resource found only in Central America. It later became an important cash crop in Madagascar. Now a U.S. biotech company has developed a process to clone the vanilla flavor in a cell culture. If the firm sells the bioengineered version for less than natural vanilla...
...heavily contaminated Silesia region of southwest Poland to a rash of lung, skin and eye disorders among Bulgarian children who live near chemical plants on the Danube River. Eastern Europe's governments, barely able to keep their economies moving, have little money to clean up pollution. In presummit negotiations the main role of what used to be called the second world was to insist that any funds for the developing nations be matched with set-asides for the "economies in transition...