Word: standoff
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...arsenal of sophisticated weaponry is at the disposal of a 1 million-strong battle-hardened military, by far the largest of any Arab state. Given Israel's formidable military strength, Saddam's buildup amounts to a Middle East version of mutual assured destruction, the same kind of nerve-racking standoff that governed East-West relations throughout the cold...
Lithuanians had been hoping for foreign intervention in their secession standoff with Moscow, but what they got last week was not what they had in mind. Winding up a summit in Paris, French President Francois Mitterrand and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl urged Vilnius to resolve its crisis with Moscow "through the classic channels of dialogue." To get talks going, they suggested in a letter to Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis, "it would be helpful if the effects of the decisions taken by your Parliament were suspended...
Gorbachev's preoccupation with the secessionists is understandable. "As Lithuania goes, so goes the nation," observed a senior White House official. The volatile standoff between Moscow and Vilnius came just as radical ( nationalists won a majority of seats in the local legislatures of the other two Baltic republics, Estonia and Latvia. Gorbachev's angry words had some effect: Estonian Communist Party leaders last week said the republic should negotiate its secession with Moscow, while the parliament of independence- minded Georgia postponed elections until the fall...
President Bush made it clear that the war is over as far as the U.S. is concerned. "There is no reason at all for further military actions from any quarter," he said. But if power in Nicaragua is to change hands peacefully, the military standoff must be resolved before inauguration day. A violent confrontation would present Bush with an appalling decision on how far to go & to support the candidate the U.S. helped elect. Washington might serve its own interests better by persuading the contras to demobilize immediately, as both Chamorro and the Sandinistas have asked, but only after...
...came last week that six enemy helicopters were approaching the city, Pasadena police scrambled one of their own choppers to warn the intruders away. Though no shots were fired and the opposing whirlybirds never came closer than a half-mile from each other, the aerial confrontation underscored a tense standoff between state and local officials in Southern California over efforts to control an infestation of Mediterranean fruit flies...