Deal Before it comes into effect, an agreement may have to be approved orratified
Ratify by an elected body such as a parliament, which may refuseratification by vetoing the agreement.
· The vital breakthrough in GATT talks eventually came with concessions on both sides.
· The high-volume propaganda exchange between the United States and the European Community has not only made a successful outcome to the talks much more difficult to achieve, but has also soured relations generally.
· Vietnam and Britain have reached agreement on the return of at least 300 Vietnamese boat people to their communist homeland.
· Dresdner Bank and Banque Nationale de Paris have just struck an agreement to collaborate in international markets.
· That’s how he came to meet Lenin in 1921 and broke a trade impasse. Hammer struck a deal in which Soviet furs were exchanged for American wheat.
· He still carries weight in White House, especially on Middle East questions, where he supervised the Camp David accord between Israel and Egypt.
· In a follow-up to the Earth summit the declaration called on other nations to join the G7 partners in ratifying the climate change convention.
G Trade talks scenario. Read this article from Today and answer the questions.
The world pulled back from the brink of an economic war last night as Europe and the US finally reached a deal in the crucial Gatt talks. ... Officials from the two sides reached agreement at the nth hour after six years of haggling over Gatt: the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The Americans had threatened to impose savage sanctions against EC goods, including a 200 per cent import duty on French wine.
They were due to come into force on December 5. But the deal was sealed by transatlantic telephone after President George Bush gave the US team the go-ahead. ... After two final days of talks in America, EC Agriculture Commissioner Ray MacSharry in Brussels and US Agriculture Secretary Edward Madigan in Washington spoke the historic words: 'That's a deal.'
The EC's Frans Andriessen said: ‘When we left Washington, we did not have a deal. Now we do.'
In Downing Street, a jubilant John Major hailed the accord as *the single most important trade deal the world has seen.'
A trade battle would have been catastrophic, he said. Mr Major was mainly responsible for getting negotiations re-started after a breakdown that followed an outburst from EC Commission President Jacques Delors. Mr Delors was accused of trying to scupper the talks because the US was demanding cuts in farming subsidies. Last night France was still opposing the deal, which means less cash for its farmers.
'The conditions defined by the French government are not fulfilled/ said agriculture minister Jean-Pierre Soisson. At first sight of this accord, I cannot accept it.' But he refused to be drawn on whether his government would veto the deal which will cut subsidised EC farm exports by 21 per cent. ...
A French farmers' union said it was a *knife in the back' and called for immediate nationwide protests. ... A small group of farmers burned hay and tyres outside government offices in Calais as a foretaste of likely action. ...
1 What's the play on words in the title?
2 If you pull back from the brink of something, does it become less likely?
3 Is an eleventh-hour agreement necessarily decided at n pm?
4 If you haggle over something, you neg______ intensely over it.
5 Are savage sanctions punitive?
6 Does ‘the deal was sealed' mean that it was a) rejected, or b) agreed?
7 MacSharry is Madigans’s European coun_____
8 If you hail something, do you welcome it?
9 If you make an outburst, you suddenly react emotionally, usually angrily, to something. This outburst might have scuppered the talks: it might have caused the talks to b___k d__ .
10 If you refuse to be drawn on something are you willing to talk about it?
11 The French government might veto the deal: it might not r_ _ _ _ __ it.
12 If you get a foretaste of something, do you get an idea of what it will be like?
