Mr. Clinton, whose trip is intended to honor the Baltics' hard-won independence, will meet with all three countries' Presidents.

Many teen-agers are uncomfortable asking for their parents' help on these issues directly, worrying that admitting their confusion might interfere with their hard-won independence.

But hidden in their unconscious design are traces of West Africa and the emergence of a hard-won independence.

Not your career or your hard-won independence.

Instead, they perceived the Moroccan demands as an attempt to infringe the country's hard-won independence and pressure it when it was at its weakest.

There, Mr. Kuchma is regarded as a "traitor" to Ukraine who may undermine the country's hard-won independence.

Now they feared losing that hard-won independence.

People who want to keep their hard-won independence and who fear being betrayed into union with Europe by treacherous politicians.

For others it was a crisis of spirit that threatened the hard-won independence of the Air Force.

Our Founders reckoned that their hard-won independence would soon be snatched away if it were not matched by economic independence.