Word: protocol
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...horrors perpetrated during the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, none have been more insidious than the routine use of mustard gas by the Iraqis against their Iranian foes. Despite a 63-year-old international protocol that forbids the use of chemical weapons, the Iraqis have relied increasingly over the past four years on mustard gas, and possibly cyanide gas and nerve agents as well, to combat Iranian forces. Chemical weapons, dubbed "that hellish poison" by Winston Churchill, weighed heavily in Iran's abrupt decision last month to abandon the fight against Iraq and pursue a cease-fire...
Since the Halabja carnage, reaction in diplomatic circles and the international media has been strangely muted. Iraq's flagrant violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol did not precipitate an enraged outcry from the 105 nations that have signed the ban on chemical weapons through the years, nor did it inspire any attempt to bring Iraq before the International Court of Justice. Despite "major acts of genocide," says Steven Rose, a neurobiologist at Britain's Open University, "the fact is, Iraq has got away with...
Such activity violates the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which outlawed the use of all poison gases, but never forbade their production and stockpiling. More stringent precautions might have been advised, given the lengthy and sordid history of chemical warfare. Use of deadly fumes dates back to the Peloponnesian War, when tar pitch and sulfur were mixed to produce a suffocating gas. Twenty-three centuries later, chemical weaponry emerged as the ugly stepchild of the modern chemical industry. The great nations of Europe decided that such weapons were barbaric and outlawed them in the Hague Convention...
...thus seemed a diplomatic miracle when, on May 5, Lefebvre signed a protocol with the Vatican specifying the terms for a reconciliation. But the Archbishop had second thoughts as he reflected upon the carefully crafted deal -- and listened to the advice of his more conservative followers. Last week the agreement fell through, threatening what to Rome is that most frightful of events: schism...
...hallmark of his career: of looking at people as individuals rather than as masses, of insisting that political power must come from the people up, not the government down. They battled for the right to let Reagan be Reagan behind a great Moscow pulpit. It was mind over protocol...