Secretary Norton has also set up a careful process to resolve decades-old disputes regarding roads in the West.

State Department officials have said repeatedly that they do not intend to try direct mediation of the decades-old dispute over Kashmir, but to try to impress on both sides the need to cool tensions.

The fighting on land between Iran and Iraq began in September 1980, when Iraq, seeking to redress decades-old disputes over border territory, invaded Iran on several fronts.

In 2008 in Spain, a local judge ordered crucifixes removed from public schools to settle a decades-old dispute over whether crucifixes should be displayed in public buildings in a non-confessional state.

There is fascinating material in this new book, not least Mr. Aczel's examination of the decades-old dispute about the identity of the inventor of the compass.

But, like it or not, the American military attack has embroiled the United States in internal Iraqi politics, essentially forcing it to take sides in a decades-old dispute between two rival Kurdish factions.

But the strife tearing at Colombia has roots that predate the drug trade, anchored in festering, decades-old disputes over land, worsened by the lawlessness of Colombia's vast countryside.

Environmentalists and Dow are battling fiercely in the latest flare-up in a decades-old dispute over Dow's handling of dioxin, a toxic byproduct of chlorine-based herbicides and related chemicals.

But decades-old disputes over farm subsidies may once again prove insurmountable, trade experts said.

Due to come into force in 2007, it has finally settled a decades-old dispute over the two countries frontiers and, the Saudis' hope, will prevent the smuggling of weapons and qat.