Word: diplomats
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They may both belong to France's conservative party, but President Nicolas Sarkozy and former Prime Minister Dominique Galouzeau de Villepin could not be more different. Tall, elegant, and ostentatiously erudite, Villepin was a career diplomat who gained the Matignon without ever having run for office. Short, petulant and sparking with excessive energy, Sarkozy marched to the Elysée Palace by winning an election, using old-fashioned political grunt work and his Cabinet posts to establish a reputation for delivering results. Along the way, the two men's conflicting styles and rival aspirations turned them into bitter enemies...
...brawl is more than a personal feud. It pits the older, cosseted caste of statesmen and dignitaries against a younger, feistier generation more driven by election victories and policy results than diplomas and refinement. The split is perfectly personified in Sarkozy and Villepin. Born and raised abroad to a diplomat father and a judicial official mother, Villepin attended the élite schools that produce France's top civil servants. True to his family's aristocratic roots, the suave, permatanned Villepin is famous for writing poetry and studies of Napoleon. Despite winning praise as Foreign Affairs and then Interior Minister, when...
...book, Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat's Jewel Box, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talks about how jewelry became her signature diplomatic tool. From turtles to doves to hot-air balloons, she used her vast collection of costume brooches to send specific messages to everyone from Saddam Hussein to Nelson Mandela. (See TIME's 10 Questions with Madeleine Albright...
...appointment of Gration was something of a surprise to Washington's Sudan watchers; Gration's own first choice was to head NASA. And as a plainspoken first-time diplomat, Gration hasn't exactly been careful with his choice of language. Before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee in late July, Gration testified that sanctions on Sudan should be loosened, a statement he had to retract within days. Earlier, he asserted that only "remnants of genocide" remain in Darfur, provoking fury from Darfur advocacy groups and directly contradicting his boss's position: Obama has said three times since January there is currently...
...Despite the [Iranian] demands, our experts continue to participate in talks as they always have," a French diplomat told TIME on Tuesday. "Tomorrow may be another story - or it might not. Who can tell with Iran...