"If anything, he may have to take a hard-line policy as a way of proving himself to challengers or to these senior leaders, " Mr. Klinger said.

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Canada's National Post says the Republicans faltered on their hard-line on immigrant policy in its commentary on their election losses.

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There are many reasons for the government's hard-line defence of its one-child policy.

ECONOMIST: China's population

But his weakest spot is foreign policy, where he is not thoughtful but reflexively hard-line.

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For his part Mr Prodi, who first lost power in 1998 after hard-line Communists had refused to back his government's public-finance policy, is clearly determined not to let it happen again.

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On the line are the fruits of countless hard-won battles in which the Center for Security Policy has played an important, and occasionally decisive, role.

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Leading the fight are the two titans of American foreign policy: the moderate and isolated Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and the hard-line Pentagon boss, Donald Rumsfeld.

CNN: Clash of the administration titans

Also, travels by internal security chief and Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang have been seen as indicating efforts of a conservative bloc in the party leadership from the security, military, and propaganda sectors to assert itself in PRC foreign policy, an interpretation that may aid in explaining the uneven but persistent evidence of hard-line trends in that arena over the past year and a half.

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There is little doubt the paramilitaries support Mr Uribe's candidacy, but they would support anyone with his message of a get-tough policy against their hated enemies the Marxist guerrillas, and there is no evidence that the hard-line candidate has any links with them.

BBC: Profile: Alvaro Uribe Velez