Word: harshness
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...Beirut, P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat was quoted by a leftist newspaper as comparing himself with the wartime Winston Churchill. "Why do you say that I will leave Beirut?" Arafat demanded. "What is this stupid propaganda? Did Winston Churchill leave London?" Arafat's bravado concealed the harsh truth of the P.L.O.'s predicament: there is no place it can go and survive in its present form. The P.L.O. leadership and many of its guerrillas may eventually be given sanctuary in one or more Arab countries, but none was willing to accept the P.L.O. as an organized military force...
...reason for the harsh tone of that speech is that despite his conciliatory gestures toward the antinuclear movement, Reagan has increasingly been disturbed by the marchers' often anti-American spirit. Riots staged by left-wingers while he was visiting Berlin angered him especially. One aide quoted him as saying in private, "Can you imagine attacking policemen and overturning cars in the name of peace? It's awful!" Though nuclear protests elsewhere in Europe and in the U.S. have mostly been orderly, an aide who helped draft the U.N. speech says that Reagan "wanted to address the unilateral, accusatory...
Once START actually begins, of course, the attitude that will count will not be that of the U.N. delegates but the one adopted by the Soviet Union. Presidential aides dismiss any thought that the harsh tone of Reagan's U.N. speech would sour the negotiating atmosphere. Indeed, Reagan was not the only tough talker last week. In his speech to the U.N., Gromyko accused the U.S. of showing a "militaristic frenzy" in its arms buildup and beaming this message to the world: "If you want peace, then it's full steam ahead for war." But when Gromyko...
Nonetheless, TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott reports from Moscow that the Soviets seem genuinely puzzled by the mix ture of disarmament proposals and harsh words coming out of Washington these days. They recognize that Reagan's many arms-control proposals mark considerable movement from his early days as President, but are worried that the U.S. may be advancing those ideas only to calm its European allies and the peace movement. Anatoli Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador to the U.S., is believed to be telling his Politburo colleagues that moderates and pragmatists, mostly in the State Department, are vying with implacable...
...with a man like that?" asks the narrator of one of his stories. "How can you dissuade his eye in a crowd from seeking out the cheek with acne, the infirm hand; how can you teach him to respond to the inestimable greatness of the race, the harsh surface beauty of life...