Word: toning
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...West Beirut, P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat tried to galvanize his beleaguered forces for a last stand. Speaking on the Voice of Palestine radio station in an angry, desperate tone, Arafat vowed to turn Beirut into "the graveyard of the invader and the Stalingrad of the Arabs." Arafat and other top P.L.O. officials spurned calls to surrender their arms in exchange for safe escort out of Beirut. Young guerrillas bulldozed walls of red clay to serve as barricades and cut holes in street pavements to plant mines. Despite the overwhelming odds, Palestinian morale seemed high. Said a P.L.O. major: "We have...
...President sought to balance his speech by declaring that for all their suspicion of the Soviets, "Americans yearn to let go" of their arms and are entering negotiations "bearing honest proposals." Still, the speech differed strikingly in tone from some of those that Reagan gave in Europe, notably one in Bonn during which he told antinuclear marchers that "my heart is with you." Nor was there any question who had decided on the switch. The President not only dictated the tone but personally wrote some of the more striking sections, including the "paper castle" passage, during a weekend at Camp...
...reason for the harsh tone of that speech is that despite his conciliatory gestures toward the antinuclear movement, Reagan has increasingly been disturbed by the marchers' often anti-American spirit. Riots staged by left-wingers while he was visiting Berlin angered him especially. One aide quoted him as saying in private, "Can you imagine attacking policemen and overturning cars in the name of peace? It's awful!" Though nuclear protests elsewhere in Europe and in the U.S. have mostly been orderly, an aide who helped draft the U.N. speech says that Reagan "wanted to address the unilateral, accusatory...
Individually, Reagan's other points are also well founded: the Soviet figures on military spending are indeed unbelievably low, and the evidence that the U.S.S.R. has resorted to chemical warfare is certainly disturbing. But whether the tone was the best one to adopt as START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) negotiations are about to begin in Geneva on June 29 is debatable...
Once START actually begins, of course, the attitude that will count will not be that of the U.N. delegates but the one adopted by the Soviet Union. Presidential aides dismiss any thought that the harsh tone of Reagan's U.N. speech would sour the negotiating atmosphere. Indeed, Reagan was not the only tough talker last week. In his speech to the U.N., Gromyko accused the U.S. of showing a "militaristic frenzy" in its arms buildup and beaming this message to the world: "If you want peace, then it's full steam ahead for war." But when Gromyko...