But he promised that Mexico would avoid "the open confrontations, defiant rhetoric and demagogic practices that stand in the way of real progress" on the foreign debt issue.

Along with his defiant rhetoric, there is something new here: a sense of desperation.

This might well have been dismissed as simply more of his defiant, anti-US rhetoric, were it not for two events that followed within a matter of hours.

Or is so much of the defiant, anti-government rhetoric that comes from these members of the Patriot movement just talk?

Governor Calvin Rampton refused to become ruffled by protestors despite the defiant rhetoric that upset some officials on campus and civic leaders downtown.

In view of the defiant rhetoric of President Saddam Hussein until that point, it had seemed increasingly likely that the US-led offensive would continue until his regime was removed from power.

Unimpressed by their master's defiant rhetoric, several of the guards deserted for safer climates.

But on the whole the Iraqi tactical preparation seems not to have been influenced by its own government's defiant rhetoric, and had an almost fatalistic tone.

There has also been growing domestic political pressure on Mr. Ahmadinejad to tone down his defiant rhetoric, especially after the recent imposition of sanctions by the United Nations.

Leaving Pyongyang's defiant rhetoric aside, the fact that it confessed to a secret nuclear program is a sign that North Korea may be looking for a way out of a potential crisis.