Negotiating tactics (II)

Another interesting little Voisey's Bay-related tidbit from the Premier.

On his return from his fact-finding mission to Brazil, sunny Brazil, in November, Danny Williams said, as reported by CBC last week:

You know, you have to take people at their word sometimes. You know, the commitments are already in writing, you know, as firm as they are. However, when someone looks me straight in the eye, across the table, and says, you know, "we will honour our commitments to Newfoundland and Labrador," this particular individual, when I heard him, when I saw him say that, then I was quite comfortable with that.

After having almost endorsed the Voisey's Bay deal in August, he is back to his orthodox view that the Voisey's Bay smelter commitments are somehow faulty or lacking. He says, as a sarcastic aside, "as firm as they are."

But if someone can look the Premier in the eye, from across a table, and says stuff, and thereby makes him "comfortable", why or how does it matter how firm those commitments are, or even whether they are written down at all?

Is this also the basis — a comforting look from across the table — on which the Hebron and other recent deals have been reached?

Would Danny, in opposition, ever have accepted Roger Grimes' assurances that Inco or Hydro-Quebec had looked at him, comfortingly, across a table, and given him their word?