Word: pretexts
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...Administration officially renders a guilty verdict against the U.S.S.R. on the issue of compliance, the prospects for the Shultz-Gromyko meeting and future negotiations and agreements may be bleaker than ever. The Soviets will take the accusations as proof that the U.S. is looking for a pretext to scuttle arms control once and for all, while making the Soviets take the blame. At the same time, Congress and public opinion will be extremely skeptical about the wisdom of continuing to do any business with convicted cheaters...
Stubbs painted quite a few such marvels (though not, alas, the Arabian nightwalker or the Spotted Negro). He portrayed lemurs, monkeys, a rhinoceros and several leopards, and foreign animals gave him the pretext for two of his greatest images. One of these was a painting of a cheetah that had been sent to London as a gift to George III from a former governor-general of Madras. It is a marvel of detached observation. In straightforwardness and dignity, unblemished by caricature, the heads of the animal's two Indian handlers rank with Rubens' famous studies of an African...
Wilson's "message" is made all the more heavy handed by the absence of a plausible plot, or truly three-dimensional characters. The characters are all assembled in a mission in rural New Mexico and are held together by an even flimsier pretext--an explosion in a nearby uranium mine. The quarantine provides the characters with just enough time--24 hours--to sort out their problems and to remind us in no uncertain terms of the health hazards the indian population faces daily...
...moment." He announced that 17 New England bishops had joined with him to proclaim "irresponsible" the view (taken by Democrats Ferraro and Cuomo, among others) that officeholders should not impose on others their personal opposition to abortion. Said the statement: "To evade this issue of abortion under the pretext that it is a matter pertaining exclusively to private morality is obviously illogical." New York Archbishop John J. O'Connor had voiced similar views last month, but softened them somewhat after being challenged by Governor Cuomo. This week Cuomo is scheduled to give a long-planned address on abortion...
...face of Soviet intransigence. He has also repeatedly denied Soviet charges that his country was directly supplying the Afghan rebels in any way. Evidence to the contrary would not only compromise the talks, which are being conducted through the United Nations, but could even give the Soviets a pretext for moving into Pakistan's North-West Frontier province. "We're going to keep Zia's hands clean," CIA Director William Casey told a top aide early on. Says a senior intelligence official: "Ideally, the pipeline had to be invisible, passing through Pakistan without the Pakistanis' being...