21.  As a result, Hashimoto said, Japan will take a tougher stand in the semiconductor and other trade talks, Kyodo News service reported.

22.  Best financed among those is publisher Steve Forbes, who routinely attacks Bush for not taking a tougher stand against abortion.

23.  But a deepening of the violence would make it even harder for Cheney to win support for a tougher stand on Iraq.

24.  But China appears to be taking a much tougher stand on its latest veto, which will quickly end the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Macedonia.

25.  But the defense secretary also was aware that Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Yevgenny Primakov, his foreign minister, have taken tougher stands on NATO expansion.

26.  Each of the six countries he has visited in the region so far has opposed a tougher stand on Iraq.

27.  Israelis claim that Arafat is stalling until after the U.S. election next month because he believes Clinton would take a tougher stand against Israel if re-elected.

28.  Israelis have also charged that Arafat was stalling until after the U.S. election next month because he believed President Clinton would take a tougher stand against Israel if reelected.

29.  Israeli troops again dragged Jewish settlers from a West Bank hilltop on Wednesday, and a Palestinian minister demanded that Israel take a tougher stand against the demonstraters.

30.  Maskhadov has been under strong pressure from his opponents recently to adopt a tougher stand in his relations with Russia.