Word: straws
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There?s a saying in Washington that diplomacy is the art of getting someone else to have your way. For Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, the most senior diplomats of the nations that invaded Iraq three years ago, the way is clear: Iraqi politicians must lay aside sectarian and factional differences, and sometimes plain old ego-tripping, and quickly form a ?national unity? coalition government to fulfill the promise of the unprecedented national elections...
...skepticism certainly in my country is understandable,? Straw admitted at the same press conference, ?as long as there appears to be slower progress than anticipated...
...last-ditch effort to galvanize Iraqi pols, Rice and Straw traveled to Baghdad together over the weekend in the hopes that their combined clout would make an impact where individual visits, calls and messages through envoys had failed. To keep their mission secret, they waited until well after dark Saturday to take off from Liverpool, where Straw had been showing Rice around his constituency. They used Rice?s 757 and, knowing that Straw was suffering from a lingering bronchial infection, she insisted he sleep on the pull-out bed in her cabin. To his embarrassment, Straw learned only the next...
Acting Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari doesn?t fit the bill, as far as she and Straw are concerned, because he has been unable to pull together a coalition government so far, and they don?t think his odds are improving. Though they insisted in public they weren?t meddling in internal Iraqi politics, they are known to have told Jaafari bluntly in private that the numbers were against...
...didn?t bow out by the time Rice and Straw had to depart, and there is no certainty he will anytime soon. So there were no breakthroughs to announce. When asked if the Iraqi pols had gotten the message, Rice said, ?Yeah. Well, I had a very strong sense that the message was indeed getting through. I don't think that the Iraqi leaders were unaware of the importance of getting this government formed...