Word: thaws
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Despite past zigzags, there were indications last week that the Administration was inching toward a thaw in East-West relations. In a letter to Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov, congratulating him on his election as President of the U.S.S.R., Reagan wrote: "I hope that together we can find ways to promote peace by reducing the level of armaments." In testimony delivered before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State George Shultz also struck a note of tentative conciliation. "We do not accept as inevitable the prospect of endless, dangerous confrontation with the Soviet Union," he declared. "We now seek...
Officially the Administration appeared willing to accept Andropov's overtures as a tentative thaw in East-West tensions. If Moscow was ready "to take concrete steps" to improve relations, said State Department Spokesman Alan Romberg, it would find "a ready partner" in the Reagan Administration...
...warming of the international climate touched off a thaw inside the U.S.S.R. Partly because he had attended his first summit meeting with Western leaders the year before in Geneva, Khrushchev felt able to launch his destalinization campaign and begin releasing prisoners from the Gulag Archipelago in 1956. This time American diplomacy had helped to improve conditions within the Soviet Union. But in the absence of clear, consistent ideas about how the Soviet system really works, American efforts to make that system more compatible with U.S. interests and values have been doomed to repeat old errors and commit new ones...
...Secretary of State's meeting with MacEachen and a subsequent talk with Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau were signs of a small thaw in a U.S.-Canadian relationship that has grown increasingly frosty. Washington is concerned by what it sees as the nationalistic and discriminatory investment policies of Trudeau's Liberal government. Those worries have been expressed vocally in the U.S. Congress. Last week Congressman John Dingell, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, attacked Canada for "unfair and confiscatory policies in the energy and investment areas." According to a report issued by the subcommittee...
...would flood northern agricultural lands, temporarily halt river traffic and, by denying salmon and other river-breeding species their fresh-water spawning grounds, wreck flourishing fisheries. Severe problems may also come from the thick ice expected to remain well past winter in the new reservoirs. By retarding the spring thaw, the freeze-up could cut the already brief northern growing season by two weeks. The prolonged winter weather might also increase spring winds and reduce vital rains...