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/ 15 July 2005

What makes a hardliner?

Iran’s new President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is one. So are Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. These men, we are told by CNN, the Wall Street Journal and the London Financial Times, are "hardliners". But what exactly is a hardliner — and why are some world leaders hardliners and others not?