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- <text id=92TT2105>
- <title>
- Sep. 21, 1992: Lose Some, Win Some
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Sep. 21, 1992 Hollywood & Politics
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK
- WORLD, Page 16
- Lose Some, Win Some
- </hdr><body>
- <p>Yeltsin gives Tokyo the cold shoulder but warms up to Taipei
- </p>
- <p> Boris Yeltsin would have liked nothing more than to return
- from his state visit to Tokyo with Japanese promises of aid for
- his country's wrecked economy. But the price of Japan's help
- proved too high for the Russian President, who abruptly canceled
- the long-planned trip just four days before he was to depart. The
- reason: months of tense negotiations failed to resolve a
- 47-year-old territorial dispute over a group of islands in the
- Kurile chain north of Japan.
- </p>
- <p> Tokyo has long refused to join other industrialized
- democracies in providing direct economic aid to Russia until
- Moscow handed back sovereignty over the thinly populated
- islands, which the Soviet Union seized in the waning days of
- World War II. But Yeltsin had little bargaining room;
- nationalist opposition groups in Moscow threaten to call for the
- President's impeachment if he caves in to Japanese demands.
- Rather than return from Japan empty-handed, Yeltsin simply
- reneged. In Tokyo one newspaper blamed the cancellation on the
- Japanese government, saying it was the result of "poor diplomacy
- by third-class politicians."
- </p>
- <p> While relations with one Asian nation faltered, Yeltsin
- was expanding ties with an old nemesis in the region--Taiwan.
- In deference to Beijing, the former Soviet government had
- refused any contact with Taipei. But the risk of Beijing's wrath
- did not stop Russia and Taipei from announcing plans to
- establish unofficial relations, the same level of ties Taiwan
- maintains with many other countries. Yeltsin hopes for the
- result that he failed to achieve with Japan: increased
- investment in Russia.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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