Word: toehold
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...pact gives the Vatican its first diplomatic toehold within the Soviet bloc.* The breakthrough is one result of a decision by Pope John XXIII in the early 1960s to launch a friendlier policy toward the Communist world. The negotiations that led to last week's recognition of Poland's Communist regime began in 1974. Throughout, Warsaw was far more eager for progress than the church, especially with the election in 1978 of the Polish Pope John Paul II. After Solidarity was outlawed in 1982, the Polish government became desperate for Vatican ties in order to win support among its devoutly...
...Middle East and Central America. But even in the Middle East, Iran's defeat and the subsequent isolation of Syria have checked at least temporarily the most radical and destabilizing players in that area. In Central America the Soviets have indeed established a strategic toehold, but this is unlikely to spell immediate danger for the region because of Nicaragua's economic chaos and social unrest. In fact, for the first time in a generation, one can say that there is not a single international crisis facing the U.S. In such a becalmed environment, what can the two candidates debate...
...small gains south of Fish Lake, a 120- sq.-mi. area flooded by the Iraqis as a defensive barrier. Iran has also made incremental progress southeast of Basra in the marshy terrain along the Shatt al Arab, a strategic waterway that affords access to the Persian Gulf. The new toehold has enabled the Iranians to bombard Basra from closer range...
Shrewd negotiating tactics are a familiar part of the Ghermezian success story. The family gained a North American toehold when Patriarch Jacob Ghermezian, now 86, moved to Montreal from Tehran in 1959. The family began selling Oriental rugs door to door, then opened a Montreal retail outlet, which within five years blossomed into a chain of 17 stores. The leap to real estate came in the 1960s, when the Ghermezians began snapping up land in Edmonton for as little as $100 an acre while the oil boom got under way and later sold some of the property...
...dragged on for 5 1/2 years, claimed an estimated 350,000 to 400,000 lives, and caused badly frayed nerves in the region. Two months ago, thousands of Iranian troops stormed across the Shatt al Arab, the long-disputed waterway that lies between the two countries, and established a toehold in Iraq's Fao Peninsula, a desolate strip of land that juts into the Persian Gulf. Despite superior firepower, Iraqi forces have been unable to dislodge the Iranians. The Fao beachhead was established just as falling oil prices threatened to starve both Iran's and Iraq's military and civilian...