Word: standoff
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...members is Cyprus, which has been split between Greeks and Turks for a generation. The U.N. pushed a plan to end the island's 28-year division in November, hoping that the prospect of E.U. membership would jumpstart negotiations to settle Europe's longest-running standoff. That trap never sprang. As promised, the E.U. will now admit the Greek part of Cyprus, but urged both sides to keep working toward a deal. The Turkish government had set its sights unerringly on starting negotiations before the E.U. grows from 15 to 25 members. It worries that it will have a tougher...
...protest the death sentence imposed on Hashem Aghajari, a reformist professor who criticized the clergy's monopoly on interpreting the Koran in a speech given June 19. The Aghajari verdict has stirred the long-dormant student movement, provided focus for popular discontent and injected new life into the standoff between President Mohammed Khatami's reformist parliamentary majority and the hard-line clerics who control the Expediency and Guardian Councils, which form a supervisory executive. Two reform bills, limiting the Guardian Council's ability to veto electoral candidates and curbing the excesses of an often arbitrary and politically motivated judiciary...
Instead of questioning whether it was legal for the Russian forces to use gas in ending the Moscow theater standoff, people should question the legality of the Chechen terrorists' action. A free world should not care what was used to get rid of a bunch of assassins and save the vast majority of nearly 800 hostages, though some 130 of those hostages were killed. Fighting terrorism requires guts and the use of every possible means. Terrorism is a disease that has to be attacked from every conceivable angle. JOSE LUIS BELMAR Stockholm...
...hours after police moved in, 76 of the 99 men lodged official requests for asylum in France, with 13 more accepting the offer of five days in a reception center to consider their options. Both possibilities had been on the table since the occupation began five days previously. The standoff in Calais was just another reminder of the U.K.'s popularity among asylum seekers. Over the past three years, only 1% of the migrants passing through Sangatte have applied for refugee status in France. Like Kurshid, most want to go to Britain, which has traditionally been viewed as a cushier...
...Administration's doves, led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, the key U.S. objective in the current standoff is disarmament. They believe a new ultimatum on weapons of mass destruction that gives Baghdad no wiggle room and is backed up by an absolutely credible military threat offers the best chance of peacefully disarming Iraq. Last month, Powell even suggested that full compliance with UN terms would in itself constitute regime change because that would signal Saddam's regime had fundamentally altered its ways...