Word: strongman
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Colonel Muammar Gaddafi could not have appeared more at ease last week as he sipped orange soda in an official guest house during a one-hour interview with TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott in the central Libyan desert city of Sebha. Indeed, the mercurial strongman's imperturbability seemed to be in almost studied contrast to the erratic policies that have increasingly made Libya a focal point of international controversy and contention. Only hours after the interview, Israel charged that Libyan-operated SA9 missiles had been fired at Israeli reconnaissance planes from Palestinian positions in southern Lebanon (see preceding story...
...military aid to Guatemala, whose repressive military regime was recently accused by Amnesty International of complicity in 3,000 political murders since 1979. The State Department announced that it was closing Libya's embassy in Washington and expelling its diplomatic personnel because of well-substantiated charges that Libyan Strongman Muammar Gaddafi was actively promoting international terrorism...
...bizarre outpouring reminded some observers of the more hysterical manifestations of the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960s. In reality it was the latest national morality campaign promulgated by South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan, the former general turned strongman who has been zealous about rooting out graft and creating what he calls a "clean and honest climate" in the country. At the start of his purification drive last summer, Chun ordered the dismissal of 8,000 government employees for corruption and inefficiency. He also accused ten prominent citizens, including an ex-Prime Minister, a former top intelligence officer...
...just 15 months, President Chun Doo Hwan has consolidated his political grip on South Korea to a degree that nearly rivals that of his assassinated predecessor, Strongman Park Chung Hee. Two weeks ago, Chun's Democratic Justice Party swept to a healthy majority-151 seats -in the country's 276-member National Assembly. After formally taking office last August, the tough former general first tightened, then abolished martial law, launched an anticorruption campaign, and promulgated a new constitution. He spared the life of Dissident Leader Kim Dae Jung, an act that contributed to the success of Chun...
...Libyan Strongman Muammar Gadaffi last November dispatched tanks and troops into neighboring Chad, defeated one faction in that country's sputtering civil war and announced a "merger" of the two nations. Since then tremors of anxiety have reverberated across West Africa. Last week a meeting of foreign ministers of the Organization of African Unity in Addis Ababa was marked by angry attacks against Libya's "aggression" in Chad. Many West and Central African leaders fear it is only the first step toward a consummation of Gadaffi's long-range ambition to establish an Islamic sub-Saharan republic...