It voted to impose penalties on North Korea, its neighbor and onetime ally, for testing nuclear weapons.

Mr. Crosson took on former deputies, onetime allies, a growing number of influential business leaders and some of his own association members.

Chinese officials have raised doubts that the North, its neighbor and onetime ally, has working nuclear weapons.

But will the impassioned words delivered in sermons translate into tangible action for onetime allies whose relationship has been sorely tested?

"Councilwoman Julia Harrison, she does not want to move," he said of his onetime political ally.

Some of his onetime allies now vilify Mr. Simmons.

He has lost onetime allies who, he said, were afraid to work against the mayor.

And in 1993 he flatly supported President Clinton's promise to halt the exclusion of homosexuals from the armed services, infuriating many onetime allies.

The onetime allies soon became political rivals.

Pickets and the police ringed schools as onetime allies in the civil rights struggle shrieked accusations of racism and anti-Semitism at each other.