Word: geneva
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Using poison gas has been a violation of international law since 1925, but stocking national arsenals with it has not. The 39-nation Conference on Disarmament in Geneva filled some loopholes last week when it finished work, after 24 years of negotiation, on a new treaty. It outlaws production, stockpiling and transfer of chemical weapons, and will take effect after 65 nations have signed it. Some states will refuse to sign; others, like Russia, will hesitate because scrapping chemical weapons will be so expensive. For the U.S., which will sign, the price tag will be more than $6 billion...
...London last week for a conference on Yugoslavia, Eagleburger called for tighter sanctions against Serbia, more international monitoring of Serbia's borders and intensified relief efforts. He also pushed for the creation of a permanent negotiating mechanism in Geneva to slog through the messy details standing in the way of a Yugoslav settlement. All these things came to pass, and Eagleburger was pleased by the strong international unity demonstrated. But absent the use of U.S. military force, which he fears could lead to another Vietnam quagmire, none of these steps will guarantee a formula for changing Serb behavior soon...
...Balkan war has produced as many broken promises as broken bodies. Though the warring parties agreed to begin new talks next week in Geneva, some of those closest to the crisis are giving up hope. Britain's Lord Carrington, the European Community negotiator, resigned after a year of fruitless labor -- including more than 30 cease-fires, all broken. And George D. Kenney, a career diplomat who heads the State Department's Yugoslavia desk, resigned to protest America's failure to act decisively against Serbian "genocide." The London conference, he said, was "a charade...
...without a stiff fix from Washington. U.S. shipyards enjoy the protection of a 50% tax imposed on nonemergency repairs of U.S.-owned ships in foreign yards. Another boost to maritime interests is a law that prohibits foreign- built vessels from carrying goods from one American port to another. In Geneva, U.S. negotiators say they want to exempt shipping altogether from the new GATT regime. Extensive textile quotas, which the Uruguay Round proposes to bring under GATT for the first time, raise the bills of every American family almost $500 a year, according to a 1987 study. But the beneficiaries...
...seven industrialized nations, known as the G-7, as the logical deadline for resolving its impasse with Europe over farm subsidies. "These are very difficult problems," says a senior Administration official, "but at some point everybody has to hold hands and jump into the water." The diplomats in Geneva may find their job easier if they recognize that any lengthy negotiation reaches a point where the best becomes the enemy of the good. But they will also be aided by a broader constituency aware of what it all means for them...