At Northwest Airlines and at Trans World Airlines, employees recently traded concessions for roughly a third of the company.

Mr. Kerrigan said, "I have repeatedly stated that we do not propose to trade concessions for management heads."

Hitler would not allow his ambassador to trade concessions for French cooperation, and formal negotiations between the Third Reich and Vichy regime came to naught.

It is common for several key issues to go unresolved until the last minute, partly because Republicans and Democrats trade concessions on one issue for gains on another.

Employees at Northwest Airlines also traded concessions for an equity stake recently in an effort to help that carrier avert a bankruptcy filing.

However in other circumstances, especially when the seller has a degree of power through being able to meet buyer requirements better than competition, the seller may be able to trade concessions from the buyer.

While unions have traded concessions for equity at Trans World Airlines and Northwest Airlines, they did so only with their backs against a wall.

There also remains the possibility that a less ambitious proposal might be discussed to trade concessions from the unions for a minority stake in United.

The suicide-bomber war will not be ended when powerless brokers list all the points of disputation and then pretend to trade concessions.

Some Administration officials have suggested they might be willing to trade concessions on capital gains for Republican acceptance of the President's plan to give tax breaks for college tuition.