Just last week Republican and Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives abandoned talks to form a joint committee on election reform because they could not even agree on such a committee's makeup.

They later called on the Party to abandon talks on forming a coalition government with Fine Gael, describing the proposal as inherently undemocratic.

Accor of France said it had abandoned talks to buy Granada Compass's hotel business because it was unable to agree on a price.

Donald J. Trump is abandoning talks on a possible joint acquisition of Alexander's, the New York-based retailer.

West Ham had not signed any contracts, allowing the OPLC to abandon talks with the club.

Likud supporters said they were ready to abandon talks with Labor and to join religious parties.

Prudential Financial and Wachovia have abandoned talks to create a joint venture that would merge their brokerage and research businesses, executives close to the discussions said yesterday.

Defensively, the regime answers that it has abandoned or modified its forced resettlement of peasants, and talks about using market incentives to increase output.

Last November, the company shook Wall Street by abandoning friendly talks to buy a Sun Chemical division and making a bid for all of Sun Chemical.

But they predicted that Hamas would not respond by abandoning talks, which continued today under Egyptian sponsorship in Cairo.