Word: sop
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
While Clinton will explain the Partnership for Peace as a sop to the likes of Poland and Hungary, he will also have to advise Yeltsin against behaving too aggressively with his neighbors, especially the former Soviet republics Moscow calls "the near abroad." Russia has intervened militarily in Moldova, Georgia and Tajikistan, and is now shaking a fist at Lithuania. If Clinton is to placate Warsaw and Budapest on NATO membership, Yeltsin will have to offer reassurance to Central Europe by dissociating his government more vigorously from resurgent Russian nationalism...
Suppose more was required? Chances are it will never happen, say Administration aides; the cap is a psychological sop to conservatives who are worried that the subsidies would become an open-ended drain on the Treasury. Officially, though, the President and Congress would have to decide whether or not to put up more money. That alarmed some liberals, who feared that the feds would simply let some people go without insurance that they could buy only if they were given additional subsidy, and that the Administration would thus renege on its promise of universal coverage. More likely the caps would...
...little they might get in a settlement now, or holding out for more -- and losing everything. Washington debated whether it could use a flash of air power to warn the Serbs away from Sarajevo without encouraging the Muslims to balk at signing an agreement. That was as much a sop to conscience as a calibrated military action, and, as usual, America and its allies could not agree on how much would be just right...
...compromise proposed on Sunday met strong and immediate rejection. The nine-point plan had offered a sop to the Congress, later described as an attempted "bribe," by letting them keep their privileges and salaries until their term ends in 1995. The Deputies condemned the plan as a cynical attempt to circumvent the Congress. "Only cynical people could have come up with this," raged conservative Deputy Gennadi Benov. "We could accept this only if we are a Congress of political suicides." Opposition Deputy Vladimir Isakov immediately proposed an impeachment motion and said to Khasbulatov, "We are sick and tired of your...
...free last week when President F.W. de Klerk released 150 prisoners in a deal to entice Nelson Mandela's African National Congress back to the negotiating table. Most of the convicts had been serving time for violent acts in the antiapartheid cause, but Strydom's release was an obvious sop to whites: as leader of the ultra-right White Wolves, he had become a hero for some militant Afrikaners. Nonetheless, many blacks and whites were appalled...