Word: vital
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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SOUTHERN EUROPE. Communists have made gains in Italy, Greece and, most significantly, in Portugal, a strategically vital NATO ally. Last week radical Premier Vasco dos Santos Gonçalves chose a new 21-member Cabinet, including Communist Party Leader Alvaro Cunhal, who is the most rigidly Marxist boss in Western Europe. The further lurch to the left increased fears that Portugal would eventually become a Communist dictatorship. In Washington, Kissinger spoke of "an evolution in which there is a danger that the democratic process may become a sham, and in which parties are getting into a dominant position whose interests...
...LEVERAGE WITH ISRAEL. It would be a mistake to assume that either the U.S. can dictate to the Israelis what to do when it comes to the vital interests of security or that the Soviets can dictate to the Arabs. Israel is a sovereign state, responsible for itself...
...indeed cause for some smugness in the Kremlin. As a result of the breakdown of U.S. mediation efforts, the U.S.S.R. stood to gain in prestige, influence and possible strategic advantage in the Middle East. Long outshone and outmaneuvered by Kissinger's diplomatic initiatives, and locked out of vital negotiations since the suspension of the 1973 Geneva Conference, the Soviet Union now has a better chance than ever before of playing a major role in any Middle East settlement...
...collapse. The country that had fought the Communists to a stand-off since the Paris Accords of January 1973 now seemed to have lost the ability and will to resist; its defenses simply melted away before North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces. The Communists had not yet penetrated the vital Saigon region, and there was still hope that the government would be able to defend the capital. But many Viet Nam experts, who two weeks ago were predicting only limited losses for Saigon during the current dry season, now could not entirely discount the chance that the Communist momentum would...
...MIDDLE EAST, which is a source of oil that is vital to the U.S. and its trading partners and also, because of Israel, the locus of a powerful, if unwritten U.S. defense commitment...