It is an exhausting negotiation, a mountain of minuscule achievements punctuated by bouts of depression; a fiercely independent streak at odds with an inescapable vulnerability.
And that was unimaginable to the people at the rally, who prefer to think of their government as a sleek and pristine civics-book ideal, rather than the sweat-stained product of exhausting negotiation.
He recalled a particular exhausting negotiation, lasting more than a week in Taipei, when Ms. Wang was holding out for a lower price on a large order of microprocessors HTC wanted to buy from A.M.D. The two had loosely agreed on a price.
Standing outside the Stormont Castle Buildings one evening in 1998 after enduring weeks of exhausting negotiations, he said, "If you took the words 'no' and 'not' out of the English language, they'd have nothing to talk about in there".
After months of exhausting negotiations, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany agreed on Thursday to a framework deal with Iran that would limit its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
It's hard for Europeans to argue that the Palestinians have exhausted negotiations, given that Abbas has agreed to only three weeks of talks in the last four years, and that an offer in September 2008 by Israel's then-prime minister, Ehud Olmert, never received a reply.
Dave Prentis, leader of the largest public sector union, Unison, indicated that a new walkout schedule will not be announced after the meeting after declaring the organisation remained "committed to exhausting all negotiations" with government officials and employers.
This leads to lack of clarity, exhausting individual negotiations for each single case and the perception of arbitrariness and dumping.
Under the Camp David accords, President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt secured the return of the Sinai Peninsula, which Egypt had lost to Israel in the 1967 war, after an exhausting two-week negotiation with Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel and President Jimmy Carter.
British officials said privately that the patience of Mr. Brown and Mr. Cowen was exhausted after negotiations that lasted until nearly dawn on Wednesday, then resumed hours later, only to deadlock again.
But the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said in an interview in his Ramallah office that the Palestinians and Israelis had exhausted direct negotiations and that it was time for America to take a more direct role.
