Word: summiteering
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What a telling picture the Moscow summit made. Bill Clinton looking weary and spent, his head sunk in his hands, his lips tight in a glum line as reporters badgered him about Monica. Boris Yeltsin next to him, befuddled and disoriented as he struggled to link answers coherently to questions. When a journalist asked whether the Russian President would accept someone other than Viktor Chernomyrdin as nominee for Prime Minister, Yeltsin paused for a moment that grew painfully long. "Well," he finally said, "I must say, we will witness quite a few events for us to be able to achieve...
...time when leadership is desperately needed to pull the global economy out of its tailspin. If confidence lies at the heart of finance, Russia stands as a metaphor for how much of it has been lost. Instead of propping each other up at this most surreal of summits, the two key Presidents seemed to be dragging each other down. Clinton's lackluster public performance only seemed to emphasize the feeble condition of his host country. Yeltsin's failing faculties and crumbling power base reflected badly on the strong backing the U.S. has given him. At one level, Clinton's tough...
...President, Mr. Talbott wants to know if you plan to resign." In a conference call with Clinton and other top American foreign policy officials later, Talbott reported that Yeltsin slammed his fist onto the conference table and replied, "I intend to serve out my term!" That clinched the summit...
Probably the only thing worse than going through with the summit would have been canceling it. If Clinton had backed out, he would have allowed Moscow's growing anti-American forces to charge that Clinton first had pushed Yeltsin into failed reforms, and now was abandoning his faithful friend Boris...
...European problem; the Europeans said the IMF should run the show; the IMF insisted it needed more U.S. support. But instead of pitching in immediately--and watching billions of dollars disappear--the IMF and the U.S. made a bet that the reformers would hold out until the summit. It was a fatal miscalculation. Says Halliwell: "These guys were asleep at the switch. Russia was going off the tracks...