Word: weeks
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...Last week, for the first time, a Chilean judge cut through the veil of fear Pinochet had draped over his country and charged the general with kidnapping. These charges, of course, are only a handful of the more than 100 criminal complaints against Pinochet pending in the Chilean legal system. But they'll do: The case concerns the notorious "caravan of death" in 1973, when a group of senior military officers murdered some 73 political prisoners in the weeks that followed Pinochet's military coup...
...What had held Chileans back until last week from prosecuting General Pinochet was not doubts over the strength of the case against him; it was fear of the consequences. Before he stepped down in 1990, the general, who ruled at gunpoint from October 1973, had authored an immunity decree for himself to avoid just such an eventuality, and it was only 10 years later that Chile's supreme court found the gumption to strike down this pseudo-legal impunity. The reasons for their caution are plain to see: Many Chileans feared that the generals who'd voluntarily allowed the restoration...
...stance on oil prices. In fact, Saudi Arabia's official position is that it wants the oil price issue depoliticized. But there is mounting domestic political pressure on the royal family to take a tougher stand on Israel and distance itself from U.S. influence. Moments like the one last week when an Iraqi gambit on oil suddenly made Saudi Arabia Washington's most important friend in the region highlight the U.S. need to keep the Saudis sweet. And in the Middle East, Washington can't please all of its friends all the time...
...latest incidents come despite renewed efforts at implementing previous cease-fire agreements, which last week had more optimistic spokesmen on both sides cautiously chewing over prospects for resuming talks. Worse news for Barak's reelection effort may be the go-ahead he gave over the weekend for an international commission of inquiry into the current violence to begin its work - the Israelis had previously insisted that the commission should wait until after the current violence abates, but under encouragement from President Clinton Barak agreed in principle that it should begin work immediately. The commission, constituted by Clinton as part...
...Yasser Arafat, who has found his diplomatic leverage expanded by the 10-week intifada - and, arguably, by Barak's reliance on a peace agreement to win reelection - has even higher expectations for the Mitchell inquiry. The Palestinian leader is hoping it will endorse his call for an international peacekeeping or monitoring force to be deployed in the West Bank and Gaza. That's an idea to which Israel remains hostile, and for obvious reasons: Arafat wants peacekeepers deployed around Palestinian populations to make it more difficult for Israel to annex land if a Palestinian state is unilaterally declared. Of course...