And while he has relentlessly vilified the political opposition and the man he edged out in the election, Henrique Capriles Radonski, as traitors and coup plotters, his government has made some moves that could be seen as concessions to longstanding grievances of the opposition, which has been demanding Ms. Afiuni's release.
On Monday, his office said Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, was free to leave Ramallah in the West Bank where he has spent the past three months under virtual house arrest.Mr Arafat drew quiet satisfaction from these concessions to three longstanding Palestinian demands.
The Kurds, whose support would push Mr. Maliki over the top, sent the prime minister of their semiautonomous region in northern Iraq, Barham Salih, to Baghdad for negotiations over longstanding Kurdish demands for territorial concessions and greater control of the region's oil.
The Foreign Office said Britain would abide by a longstanding policy not to make "substantive concessions to hostage takers".
An opinion article Thursday in the official China Daily newspaper raised Mr. Wen's trade condition again and suggested that the European Union should also make political concessions — like lifting a longstanding ban on arms exports to China.
As Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, made the pitch once more to Prime Minister Wen Jiaboa, Keith Bradsher and Liz Alderman report, an opinion article in the official China Daily newspaper "suggested that the European Union should also make political concessions — like lifting a longstanding ban on arms exports to China.
Finally, Trump's decision to try to delegitimize the election result three weeks before voting day, before an audience of tens of millions of Americans, may have, as many are saying, broken longstanding political norms — but it was also tantamount to a concession of defeat in itself.
But the large-scale deployment of the police and recent concessions — Mr. Bouteflika has promised to lift a longstanding state of emergency here — show the government is wary of the contagion of unrest in neighboring countries.
The result was that the parks department announced that rather than simply award the Red Hook Park food concession to the highest bidder, it would consider a bidder's "prior experience, longstanding community relations, and the variety of cuisine offered".
"For Pyongyang, the perennial problem child in Northeast Asia, it pays to provoke," Mr. Lee said, noting the North's longstanding strategy of using military threats to grab the region's attention and extract concessions.
