Word: primakov
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...missiles and therefore deserved a reward. Just before that, President Boris Yeltsin had spent 40 minutes on the phone with Clinton arguing for a time limit on inspections in Iraq. Clinton turned him down and, worried that Yeltsin may not be getting the straight story from Foreign Minister Yevgeni Primakov, an old friend of Saddam's, fired off a long written message detailing Iraq's violations of the inspection regime...
...bare conference room in the Palace of Nations, waiters brought in trays of steaming coffee to help keep alert the four envoys and a lower-level representative from China. Aziz by then had Baghdad's assent to the terms in the Russian statement, Primakov told the group. Iraq would allow all the inspectors, including the Americans, to return with no restrictions on their movements. It was important that the ministers now accept the Russian document as a joint statement on what the West expected of Iraq, he argued...
Albright, who is on a first-name basis with Primakov, was nevertheless wary. "Yevgeni, I hope you understand where our red lines are," she warned. "The only thing we're going to accept is unconditional Iraqi compliance." The one bone Moscow had thrown Saddam was to lobby for Iraq in the Security Council, Primakov assured her. "I entered into no obligations on behalf of anyone else...
...exhausted diplomats had produced a statement with tougher language than Primakov had first proposed. Later that morning, Iraq's Revolutionary Council announced it would accept the inspectors. But the White House wasn't at all sure Baghdad would follow the conditions spelled out in the Geneva document, so Clinton ordered U.S. forces to remain in the gulf in case Saddam reneged. "I'd rather read the last chapter of this book before I decide whether I like it or not," Berger said. But the last chapter may be a long time coming...
...YEVGENI PRIMAKOV Pretty in pinstripes. Russian minister soothes Saddam. Ruskies become the new diplomacrats...