Worse still, if the majority was won at Westminster, the referendum would be organised by a hostile government.
This shift is at least partially attributable to hostile government policies and looming threats directed at the oil and gas industry which Halliburton services.
While the race has of late become increasingly competitive, as the conservative PAN party's candidate Felipe Calderon has gained ground, Washington confronts the distinct possibility of having an explicitly hostile government in Mexico.
The Sunni tribes of Anbar and Ramadi have historical connections with their brethren across the border and would welcome a Sunni-dominated government in Syria as a valuable counterbalance to a hostile government at home.
It is a simple fact that there are, in post-revolution, post-war Libya, armed groups, there are bad actors hostile to the government, hostile to the West, hostile to the United States.
The Pakistani army's paranoia is fed by scenario planning in which a hostile Afghan government, with a growing army now trained and equipped by the Americans, joins India to mount a two-front war against Pakistan, sandwiched between the two countries.
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As long as public opinion remains strongly hostile, the government will not risk a referendum in this Parliament.
The Pakistanis fear the emergence of a government hostile to them.
Cultivating good ties with a government hostile to Israel and committed to economic policies that hurt most members of the community is also growing more challenging.
The two organizations have joined forces to track down the source of the Flame virus, believed by some to be the creation of a national government hostile to Iran.
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Lib Dem supporters who voted Labour last time to ensure a Tory defeat will, the theory goes, be less inclined to do so next month, partly because they feel more hostile towards the government because of Iraq and partly because they no longer fear a Tory recovery.
How can companies create jobs when its own government is hostile and unpredictable?
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The colonel told CNN that the forces were waiting until early evening to begin moving out to avoid hostile fire from Bosnian government troops.
Yet, tempting as it is to see such structures as the answer to the Taliban, Pushtunwali is also hostile to the central government and to Western ideals, particularly of education and sex equality.
And most will not vote for him, or Mr Hashimoto or Mr Ishihara, because they want a right-wing nationalist government that is hostile to China.
The end result is the same in either case: Under President Obama, the US government has become hostile to Israel's national rights and strategic imperatives.
In the interest of strengthening Israel's ties with a hostile administration, the Netanyahu government has adopted rhetoric on the Palestinian issue that is harmful to Israel's national interests.
The de facto government intermittently suspended hostile media.
In a different era, all this might have caused great worry in Britain and, as a result, generated even more tension within the EU. But the new British government, deeply hostile to further EU integration, seems content to stand aside even as the euro zone binds itself closer.
Merkel's relations with the Russian government, while not hostile, are less friendly than those of the previous chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder.
They found that a majority of small business owners believe the federal government has become more hostile to free enterprise in recent years.
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Since entering office, and increasingly in recent weeks, the Obama administration has been both directly and indirectly signaling that it will adopt a hostile stance toward Netanyahu and his government.
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He criticised the approach for a failure to observe business etiquette and told Mr Mittal to look closely at a bid by China's CNOOC for Unocal, an American oil firm, which was scuppered by the hostile reaction of America's government and public.
Labour MP Nick Raynsford said that when Mr Coulson was still working at Downing Street, the cabinet secretary had been alerted to evidence of illegal phone hacking, covert surveillance and hostile media briefing against a senior government official - a claim the cabinet secretary denied.
And the government is no longer so hostile to private firms building infrastructure (see article).
"We consider such trafficking as hostile acts and will hold the Syrian government accountable for such shipments, " Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing.
How about if the arms themselves are not turned against us but other actions taken or supported by the government in question are profoundly hostile?
They are pragmatic, anti-ideological and results-oriented, hostile to both Big Labour and Big Government but quite prepared to see the government take an active role in dealing with problems like global warming.
But teachers' unions have been hostile to the changes proposed by the government, arguing that the expectation of an annual increment, in place since the 1920s, provided an incentive to recruit graduates into teaching.
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