Word: akbar
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...United Nations, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (C.S.C.E.), and Iran, which shares borders with both Armenia and Azerbaijan and is trying to expand its role in the region, all launched efforts to resolve the conflict. The first cease-fire brokered by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati collapsed within a few hours. The second one lasted for several days, with both sides reporting relatively minor violations. That was long enough for U.N. special envoy Cyrus Vance to visit Stepanakert on a fact-finding mission late last month and to declare his hope that third-party mediation could...
...circumstances, more than people, made the difference. Hizballah began to run into trouble in 1989. Iran was in terrible straits after eight years of war with Iraq. The fiercely anti-American Khomeini died and his successor, President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, decided it was necessary to cool revolutionary rhetoric in order to woo desperately needed trade and investment from the West. The slow shift in Iran toward more pragmatic policies to end the country's pariah status was the biggest single reason the last U.S. hostages in Lebanon were finally released...
Amid other signs of movement on the hostage issue, Iran's foreign minister, Ali Akbar Velayati, called for all parties to cooperate with U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who is leading diplomatic efforts to free the captives...
...subsidized Lebanon's Hizballah, had already been leaning westward, however grudgingly. President Hashemi Rafsanjani wants increased trade, especially from Europe, to help rebuild an economy destroyed by eight years of war with Iraq. By turning away from radicals abroad, he can also undercut his extremist domestic rival, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, Hizballah's godfather...
Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, meanwhile, had his own reasons for promoting the release of Western hostages. The pragmatic Rafsanjani regards the hostages as relics of an era no longer relevant to his country's problems. Iran, which wields much more influence than Hizballah, desperately needs Western credits, trade and technology to rebuild after its devastating eight-year war with Iraq, which ended in 1988. Rafsanjani, who knows improved relations with the West hinge on the happy resolution of the hostage drama, undoubtedly ordered or at least pressed for the release of McCarthy and Tracy. He may also have...