Word: swaps
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...avert a collapse, coalition leaders devised a complex face-saving formula. Under it, Shamir and Moda'i would swap jobs, with Shamir taking over the finance portfolio and Moda'i becoming Foreign Minister. The assignments would last until next fall, when Shamir becomes Prime Minister. Moda'i could then return to the Finance Ministry...
...Shcharansky, Bonn Bureau Chief William McWhirter set about covering the final days of delicate negotiations for Shcharansky's freedom. He dispatched Correspondent John Kohan, Russian fur hat and extra sweaters in hand, to Berlin to stake out the Glienicker Bridge. Says Kohan, who speaks both German and Russian: "The swap closed out a story of great individual courage and determination. Shcharansky took on the Soviet security apparatus...
...conviction on trumped-up charges of spying for the U.S. was widely regarded as a sign of crumbling detente. Moscow's apparent decision to free Shcharansky--and to telegraph it in advance--no doubt reflects more concern for propaganda than for human rights. But the Kremlin's willingness to swap a dissident whose freedom has been long sought by the West may also be an important sign that the Soviets are serious about improving superpower relations...
...Shcharansky swap does not mean that the Soviet Union is easing up on human rights. There is no current speculation that an even more celebrated dissident, Nobel Peace Prizewinner Andrei Sakharov, will win his freedom any time soon. Sakharov's wife Yelena Bonner was given permission last fall to visit Boston for treatment of a heart condition. But Gorbachev told the French Communist newspaper L'Humanite last week that the nuclear physicist, who had helped develop the Soviet hydrogen bomb, "is still considered in possession of state secrets and cannot leave the U.S.S.R...
...Moscow watchers see the Shcharansky deal as a propaganda gesture aimed largely at Western Europe. It has long been Moscow's design to split the NATO alliance by persuading European voters that the Soviet Union is essentially reasonable. But other Kremlinologists take a more sanguine view of the Shcharansky swap. "It alerts us that Gorbachev means business," says Princeton University Political Scientist Stephen Cohen. "He wants to remove certain roadblocks to U.S.-Soviet relations." Whatever the Soviets' real agenda, the announced swap will at least free Shcharansky from the horrors of the gulag. In the cold world of superpower diplomacy...