Word: westernness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...once and for all, Saddam has gone back to business as usual. In defiance of U.N. sanctions that ban nonhumanitarian trade and clamp an embargo on arms sales to Baghdad, he is working to rebuild his military and industrial might. Helping him are middlemen, front companies, compliant neighbors and Western businessmen eager to reforge commercial contacts with a big potential customer and the possessor of the world's second-largest oil reserves...
...doubts that the sanctions are biting. Inflation in Iraq has soared to 250% of prewar levels, while living standards have plunged by half. Both as a money-saving move and a hedge against defections of senior diplomats, Baghdad has recently had to close 15 embassies. The question facing Western policymakers is whether Saddam's intensified lobbying to end the embargo shows last-ditch desperation, which would argue for keeping up the pressure in hopes of toppling the regime, or whether Saddam has successfully ridden out the storm. In any event, his strategy is clever and multipronged...
...same time, French companies that did big business with Baghdad want to resume a lucrative connection. State-owned oil giants Elf Aquitaine and Total were the first Western firms to make contact with Baghdad after the war. Iraqi authorities proposed to give the two French companies a rich production monopoly developing the Majnoun Islands and Nahr Umar oilfields, which could produce 1 million bbl. a day. In exchange, the Iraqis wanted the French to lobby for lifting U.N. sanctions. Since then, according to the weekly Canard Enchaine, representatives of the two companies have made more than 40 trips to Baghdad...
...have Americans been wholly absent. According to Western diplomats and business travelers, agents of Occidental Petroleum, Chevron, Boeing, General Motors and others have been spotted in the first-class hotels of Baghdad and Amman, Jordan, where many of the meetings with Iraqi trade officials take place. State Department officials say they have investigated these claims and found no sign of wrongdoing by U.S. companies, who are "officially discouraged" from making such contacts. Says a State Department official: "The Iraqis are engaged in a constant effort to get companies to deal with them quickly. They want them to believe the train...
...Clinton questioned Babbitt on everything from the Interior Department, which the former Governor of Arizona heads, to the history of the Supreme Court. They talked about possible candidates for the court, previous nominees, the 20 or so Senators who would oppose a Babbitt nomination out of pique over his Western-lands policy, the politicians appointed to the high court in the past. Finally, at about 2:30 a.m., with Clinton unflagging, Babbitt departed. Friends say he left feeling that while he still had a good chance at the nomination, the President would lean a long way toward his old friend...