American diplomats called the decision today an important victory.

It did not seem like what diplomats call a productive exchange.

"A pressure group par excellence," one foreign diplomat called them.

Still, the renewed relationship will start with what an American diplomat called "modest steps."

The problem was that many diplomats, especially from Western nation-states, called the complex home.

A Western diplomat called the development "the end of normal, civil government."

The diplomats called it one of the worst such outbreaks on record.

One diplomat, who lost his job for saying so, called it a war.

A Western diplomat called the speech "courageous and very important."

But Western diplomats called the arrests a purely political move.