Word: vodka
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Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov was briefing a top-level Nicaraguan delegation over dinner in Moscow earlier this year. Emboldened by vodka, Defense Minister Humberto Ortega Saavedra demanded of Ustinov, "Are you with us to the end, or will you abandon us to the U.S.?" According to an exSandinista official, Ustinov stared back in stony silence and ignored the question. The next day, however, the Nicaraguans received a formal note from the Foreign Ministry saying that the Soviet Union would honor its ties of friendship and cooperation with the people of Nicaragua. But in the final analysis, the note added...
...applause followed the dutiful clinking of vodka glasses, Mitterrand rose to deliver his response. Alternately reading from notes and ad-libbing, the French President paid tribute to Soviet bravery during World War II ("I know the price you paid with spilled blood and 20 million dead"), but then blamed the Soviets' SS-20 missiles for upsetting the nuclear balance in Europe. When Mitterrand cited the 1975 Helsinki accords, which included a pledge to respect human rights, the guests realized what was coming. "All constraint against liberty could cast doubt on those freely accepted principles," Mitterrand intoned. "That...
Much East-West trade involves convoluted deals: Western firms sell items like steel or chemicals to Communist state trading organizations in exchange for such items as tobacco, vodka, timber, trolleys and forklift trucks. The Western company then often resells the Eastern product through a middleman for cash. In one of the biggest of these accords, Occidental Petroleum and the Soviet Union have a 20-year, $20 billion agreement that calls, in part, for the annual exchange of 1 million tons of American superphosphoric acid fertilizer for 4 million tons of Soviet ammonia, urea and potash...
...Miami Herald, however, claimed that Kennedy spent the last days of his life "in what hotel employees called an alcoholic haze." The paper said David drank vodka and grapefruit juice at the hotel bar all day; one day it was "straight through to midnight." A hotel employee corroborated that version...
Arms Control. Both badly want to bring the Soviets to the bargaining table by reviving the spirit of detente. With that attitude in mind, Reagan gibed last week, "Good will and sincerity will get them a smile and a glass of vodka. And you can guess why the Soviets will be smiling." At the debate, Mondale tried to tag Hart with flip-flopping perilously on arms control and only slowly perceiving the true virtue of freezing nuclear arms, but his attack missed the point. The truth is that Hart first explored more sophisticated approaches to arms control, like the "build...