Word: referendum
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...complicating factor. The island's last major opportunity for resolution was arguably lost when Brussels accepted Cyprus, as represented by its Greek Cypriot government, as a member in 2004, even though Greek Cypriots had rejected a painstakingly crafted U.N. peace plan in a referendum vote just prior. (Turkish Cypriots voted yes.) As a result, the Greek-Cypriot republic lost any incentive it might have had to speed up negotiations. (Read: "On the Run in Cyprus...
...that Greek Cypriots are basically content. As it stands they are an E.U. member, they're happy and prosperous," says Munir. "They know that any deal will inevitably entail some loss for them and they don't like that idea." The Greek Cypriot leader who presided over that fateful referendum was Tassos Papadopoulos, the hard-liner whose remains were bizarrely stolen and are still missing. He lost in 2008 to Christofias, a communist who ran on a pro-settlement campaign. Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Talat get along. Both are youthful, leftist, and also old trade union friends...
...recent Swiss referendum vote to ban the building of minarets seemed to confirm a trend: Europeans are becoming increasingly strident in their attempts to "protect" their culture against Islam. However, a newly published report by the Open Society Institute (OSI), a think tank set up by billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros, details the complex relationship between Muslims and non-Muslim Europeans and reveals that the suspicion is mutual. Muslims believe they are being shut out of European society...
Muslim and European leaders have denounced a Swiss referendum to block the construction of minarets--mosque towers from which Muslims are called to prayer--as discriminatory and xenophobic. More than 57% of voters supported the ban, put forward by the far-right Swiss People's Party. "It is a bad answer to a bad question," an official from the Organization of the Islamic Conference told reporters. "I fear that this kind of thing is simply a gift to extremism and intolerance...
...elected, Piñera faces heavy pressure from conservatives, especially in the military, to move Chile far back to the right. The recent exhumations indicate how nervous many Chileans are that the rightward shift will enervate the robust human-rights apparatus established since Pinochet stepped down after a 1988 referendum rejected his continued rule. Piñera himself opposed Pinochet in that plebiscite. But last month he told a gathering of retired military and police officials who served under Pinochet that he'll work to rein in the trials - "proceedings that go on ad eternum," he remarked - that have convicted...