Word: westing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...believed in the highest circles of the Vatican that Gorbachev's Kremlin predecessors were the masterminds, though the Soviets deny this. The reason for the attack, claims a ranking official of the Holy See, was that the Polish Pope refused to accept the division of Europe into East and West. "The East bloc," says this official, "realized he was a destabilizing factor...
Once the Ukrainian problem is resolved, assuming the Gorbachev-inspired liberalization continues, the Roman Pontiff can pursue his overarching vision of reunion with the whole of Eastern Orthodoxy. The churches of the East and West are like "two lungs of a single body," John Paul is fond of saying. Religious negotiations have made surprisingly brisk progress on the ecclesiastical and theological bases for union...
...heels of Cheney's announcement, word reached Washington that West German Defense Minister Gerhard Stoltenberg has drawn plans for a 15% reduction in the Bundeswehr by 1991. Almost simultaneously, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the West German Foreign Minister, arrived in Washington and let it be known that any U.S. plans to modernize short-range nuclear weapons in Europe are out of the question now that the two Germanys are groping toward reconciliation. "No German government will discuss any weapons system that might result in nuclear weapons being targeted at Dresden and Leipzig," said a Genscher aide...
...crumbling of the Berlin Wall was followed by a wave of bitterness against the hard-line Communist leadership, under the now ousted Erich Honecker, that had stifled East German lives for two generations. Some of the anger also sprang from the realization, following the opening of borders to West Germany, that the East German economy was in worse shape than the citizenry had realized...
...fact, each concession by Krenz seems to have created a fresh threat to his political survival. The opening of the borders to the West, for example, permitted a torrential outflow of East German marks, carried out by citizens who at last could use them, even at absurdly low rates, to buy something -- in the West. Fretted Prime Minister Modrow: "East Germany must not become a nation of speculators." The government's bewilderment underlined the problems encountered by a Communist leadership, albeit a reform-minded one, in coming face to face with the complexities of capitalism. Within a matter of days...