Despite its occasional populist rhetoric, the White House was conspicuously absent from weeks of pivotal negotiations this spring.
Ms. Tymoshenko's continued imprisonment threatens to further isolate Kiev from the West, just as it enters into pivotal negotiations with Russia over the price of natural gas.
In pivotal negotiations from 1979 to 1983, the auto union agreed to painful measures that held down costs and let management reduce the work forces.
So there was no shortage of consternation on Saturday morning, when a rift between branches of the environmental movement appeared to have contributed to the failure of pivotal negotiations aimed at completing a pioneering climate treaty.
Many disagreements in these pivotal negotiations have focused on the role of forests as "sinks," in which carbon dioxide, a warming gas flooding the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels and forests, is removed by trees, which store the carbon in wood and soil.
Activists at the COP21 conference in Paris are outraged by the fossil fuel industry's influence over the talks, claiming that big business is hijacking the pivotal climate negotiations by providing official sponsorships that allow them to get away with tax evasion and "greenwash" their continued use of dirty energy.
It would have been wiser, administration officials concluded later, to have made sure that a House leader was on hand for the pivotal final negotiations on the $789 billion economic package given that many House Democrats had made clear they disliked the idea of cuts being made by the Senate.
"It was pivotal to our negotiations".
With no talks scheduled, the lockout enters what many observers believe is the pivotal week in negotiations.
It could be pivotal in climate negotiations, if China, the US and Europe agree to hold global warming within what scientists say are safe limits.
Mr. Cohen played a pivotal role in negotiations over same-sex marriage legislation and was seen as a moderating influence in an otherwise hard-charging, and sometimes combative, administration.
