Word: backroom
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...backroom talks throughout the summer, Administration negotiators worked to convince Russia and China to support punitive measures that would target not just Iranian and foreign companies engaged in proliferation-related business, but other companies as well, including those with ties to the Iranian energy sector. But the effort appears to have proved fruitless - at a recent meeting of the foreign ministers of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow remains opposed to new sanctions. China followed suit soon thereafter. (Read "China Remains Skeptical of Iran Sanctions Push...
...quickly, arguing that even with the fraudulent ballots subtracted, the incumbent may still have gathered more than 50% of the vote. This, they say, would spare Afghanistan and the international community another costly and potentially violent vote in the midst of winter blizzards. Hence all that talk of a backroom deal between Karzai and Abdullah, in which Karzai would remain President but Abdullah would be named as Prime Minister or some such role. (See pictures of British soldiers in Afghanistan...
...Megrahi was released. Scotland may have had jurisdiction over the case, but British opposition politicians blamed Gordon Brown's government for its handling of the case. Victims' families and lawyers say they suspect that officials, eager to help British companies win multibillion-dollar energy and defense contracts, cut a backroom deal in exchange for al-Megrahi's freedom...
...months preceding the vote, President Karzai made a series of cunning backroom deals to co-opt potential opponents. Many assume that Dostum's support for Karzai was likewise brokered, in exchange for amnesty from prosecution on alleged crimes, or a cabinet post. But the general insists he seeks no office. Instead, if asked by the Afghan government, he says he's prepared to launch an anti-Taliban offensive across the north of Afghanistan, parts of which have seen an alarming rise in violence in recent months. "I have my own power to destroy the Taliban," he says. "They either escape...
...stymied the health-care progress in the House. Drawing on advice from the economists the day before, the President revisited an idea that committee chairmen on Capitol Hill had previously rejected: take from Congress the power to set Medicare reimbursement rates and give it to an independent board. The backroom session went on for hours; by the time it was over, Obama was on his way to winning on that point...