Word: shying
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...disingenuous in their categorical dismissal of the Times report, since there was a secret scheme to attack Saddam if the U.N. team's mission had ended in failure. A few days later, the allies announced plans to carve out a security zone in southern Iraq, home of a persistent Shi'ite insurgency, that would be off limits to Saddam's combat aircraft. "We are not doing this for no good reason," British Prime Minister John Major explained. "It's happening because there is clear evidence now of the systematic murder, genocide, of the Shi'ites...
...plight of the Shi'ites is serious, but the note of selfless compassion did not quite ring true. Just 17 months ago, when Saddam was ruthlessly crushing their rebellion in the south, Western leaders stood by and did nothing. At the time, they argued plausibly if heartlessly that an allied intervention risked both a military quagmire and an unstable partition of Iraq that could extend Iran's influence in the region. Neither prospect has disappeared. With Bush in Houston trying to reinvigorate his political fortunes, it was impossible to escape cynical questions about what was for real -- and what...
...push he did. Early in the year, he deployed 15 divisions along the internal border with the Kurdish-held north. More recently he reportedly stepped up attacks on the Shi'ite south, draining wells and defoliating the marshlands to target rebel enclaves better. Saddam also thumbed his nose at the international community, impeding the work of U.N. inspection teams, blocking aid convoys and attacking U.N. guards...
...They plan to insist that Americans serve on future inspection teams, to spotlight every Iraqi evasion of U.N. resolutions, and to boost aid to Kurds and exiled opponents of Saddam. This week the Security Council is expected to take up a resolution permitting military strikes unless Baghdad stops attacking Shi'ites in the south. The strategy, says a U.S. diplomat, is to "keep Saddam...
Baghdad's compromise left the U.S. without a clear policy for getting Saddam to observe the cease-fire that he has been violating for months in ways large and small. Among the largest has been his mounting assault on Shi'ite rebels in southern Iraq. As one countermove, Secretary of State James Baker met in Washington with leaders of the Iraqi opposition. At the U.N., Britain, France and the U.S. are drawing up a new resolution to authorize force if the Shi'ite crackdown is not stopped...