Word: regional
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Long before the tortuous, on-again, off-again negotiations of the final weeks, the changing situation in the Middle East had been pushing the U.S. toward a dialogue with the P.L.O. Shultz had repeatedly carried his American peace plan around the region in his own version of shuttle diplomacy last spring. The centerpiece of the plan was an end to Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, creation of an undefined "homeland" for Palestinians, and an international conference at which negotiations to achieve these ends would begin. But each effort ran up against Israeli objections to a conference even...
...from deep beneath the rubble. "A vision of horror," gasped a stunned Dr. Patrick Aeberhard, president of the French humanitarian aid group Medecins du Monde. An estimated 70% of the town's 20,000 population lies entombed, victims of the devastating earthquake that hit two weeks ago. Throughout the region, at least 50,000 are dead, 130,000 injured, 500,000 homeless...
...Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, in charge of the rescue effort, admitted, "There is a shortage of equipment." The need was critical. "Every hour of delay means another 20 dead out of every thousand buried," said Soviet Health Minister Yevgeni Chazov. Doctors from several sister republics were rushed into the region to minister to 19,000 injured people, nearly a third of them crowding hospitals in Yerevan and neighboring towns. Their efforts were hindered by a desperate lack of antibiotics, disposable syringes and blood supplies. About 6,500 Soviet soldiers were dispatched to aid in the rescue. By Saturday...
Gorbachev's other major domestic problem will be coping with the cost of the earthquake, likely to rise to the tens of billions of rubles. The long restoration of the quake-stricken region will drain money from an economy already reeling from a series of setbacks. The cleanup costs for the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster swallowed 8 billion rubles, about $12.8 billion. This year the Soviet budget is already expected to run a 36 billion-ruble deficit. The government has also suffered falling revenues from declining international oil prices and from its campaign to crack down on vodka consumption...
...fewer than 10,000 people died. Experts laid much of the blame for last week's shocking toll on the shoddy construction of the buildings in Armenia's cities and towns. According to Brian Tucker, acting state geologist of California who has visited Armenia, many buildings in the region are made of 8-in.-thick concrete slabs held together by metal hooks and mortar. Poorer Armenians, he says, tend to live in "very fragile, very deadly houses" made of unreinforced mud and rock. Yet geologists have long known that the region affected by the quake is interlaced with small faults...