Word: states
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Space Systems/Loral found out. A 700-page report to be issued this week by a select House committee chaired by Republican representative Christopher Cox of California tells how, on April 11, 1996, Bryen warned Loral president Robert Berry not to give China any technical help without first getting State Department permission. Berry had just announced the assignment of top company engineer Wah Lim to head a panel of Western scientists who would advise China on possible causes of three rocket failures, the most recent of which had destroyed a Loral satellite. Fixing glitches in China's rocket-guidance system...
...Lipkin-Shahak's would-be host seems to be in his corner. "From Washington, he looks good," says a State Department official. As military chief he gained considerable experience working with the Americans. The U.S. likes the idea of resuming land-for-peace negotiations between Israel and Syria at the ambassadorial level in Washington. "Lipkin-Shahak knows the issues, has the credibility and knows how to keep a secret," says the State Department source. Plus, if talks between the two nations take place in Washington, the U.S. remains fully in the picture and positioned to claim a foreign policy coup...
Berry and his senior team agreed but did almost nothing to alert Wah Lim, according to the report. On May 7, 1996, without informing State, Lim assistant Nick Yen faxed the panel's draft conclusions to scientists in Beijing. Soon after, the rockets' reliability improved dramatically. State and Defense Department officials found out about the Loral fax, went ballistic and called in the Justice Department. Loral executives insist the fax was a clerical error, but federal and congressional investigators want answers: Did Loral VIPs deliberately choose not to know too much so China could get what it wanted...
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. The latest public critic of increasingly under-fire Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is none other than that most unloved of modern-day diplomats -- former U.N. secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali. According to the New York Times, in his new book, "Unvanquished: A U.S.-U.N. Saga," the Egyptian envoy savages Albright's diplomatic abilities. "She seemed to assume," he wrote, "that her mere assertion of a U.S. policy should be sufficient to achieve the support of other nations," and tended to lecture foreign leaders rather than engage in the "difficult diplomatic work...
...from its initial emphasis on building consensus in multilateral forums such as the U.N. "Instead of trying to win international support for U.S. policy, Washington began to simply announce it on a take-it-or-leave-it basis," says Dowell. "That has also led to a problem where the State Department tends to regard the U.N. secretary general as simply another tool to implement U.S. policy." To wit, Albright spokesman James Rubin's comment on Boutros-Ghali's charges: "It was always unfortunate that Mr. Boutros-Ghali did not have the skills to successfully manage the most important relationship...