Word: speech
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...minute speech, given not in the glare of prime time but to at afternoon gathering of foreign-policy groups, offered nothing new in the way of putting pressure on the intransigent Afrikaner-led South African government. Although it was meant to calm the debate over sanctions, it brought the issue to such a head that by week's end Reagan's aides were scurrying to hint that his policy could change. The Senate, led by rebellious Republicans, proceeded to draw up a bill to apply further sanctions. Desmond Tutu, the Anglican Archbishop-elect of South Africa, called the speech "nauseating...
Although billed as the culmination of a two-month "reassessment" of U.S. policy, the speech was actually a reassertion of the President's policy of constructive engagement, a call for continuing efforts to persuade rather than pressure Pretoria to abandon apartheid and speed efforts to prepare for power sharing with South Africa's black majority. By turns defiant and defensive, Reagan seesawed between condemnations of apartheid as "morally wrong and politically unacceptable" and qualified praise of South African leaders for bringing about "dramatic change." He denounced the "Soviet-armed guerrillas of the African National Congress," the banned but influential black...
...speech went through half a dozen drafts. Twice that many hands tinkered with it, inserting paragraphs here, deleting phrases there. Anecdotes were added, then dropped. Republican Senators trooped into the Oval Office to ! argue that it should be toughened; others telephoned White House aides to have it weakened. A committee of competing factions swapped sentences and traded adjectives. On the day the address was to be given, a former aide to George Shultz was called in to verify whether some marginal notes were from the hand of the Secretary of State; they were not and thus were ignored. The haggling...
...speech did make certain demands on the South African government: the President called for Pretoria to announce a timetable for the elimination of apartheid laws; to release all political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela; to lift the ban on "black political movements," presumably including the African National Congress. He asked that the white government begin a dialogue with its opponents to create a system "that rests on the consent of the governed." None of these, however, was a departure from previous Administration policy...
...speech seemed to lack a raison d'etre, there was a reason for it. The President's address was in part designed to showcase a symbolic centerpiece: the announcement that the U.S. was sending a black Ambassador to South Africa. The name of the nominee had already seeped out: Robert Brown, a North Carolina businessman and former Nixon staffer. But in further checking, the Administration became concerned about Brown's business association in the past with Alhaji Umaru Dikko, an exiled Nigerian leader who has been charged with embezzling millions of dollars. Brown was hastily persuaded by the White House...