Calendar of 1993

▪ 1994

January

January 1

      Czechoslovakia now two nations. What had been the single nation of Czechoslovakia officially became two independent states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Vaclav Havel, the former president of Czechoslovakia, and many others, especially ethnic Czechs, had argued vehemently against separation, but to no avail. However, once an agreement was reached on a peaceful division of the country, both sides promised to cooperate in the future. National assets were divided on a 2-1 ratio based on the Czech Republic's larger population. The International Monetary Fund chose a somewhat more precise figure in reallocating the assets and liabilities of what had been Czechoslovakia. On January 26 Havel was elected to a five-year term as president of the Czech Republic. On February 15 Michal Kovac was chosen president of Slovakia.

      EC inaugurates open internal market. The 12-nation European Community (EC) began implementing the first phase of its open internal market, which, among other things, allowed individuals to transport unlimited quantities of items for personal use across national borders. The ultimate goal of the open market was to allow a free flow of people, goods, information, and currency within the EC. Some of the measures envisioned by the EC had not yet been formally adopted; others had not yet been approved by all of the individual states. Certain measures, moreover, were not scheduled to take effect until a later date. The EC market, representing some 350 million people, was expected to constitute one of the most formidable economic powers in the world. Poland was among several former Communist nations in Eastern Europe to express fears that its exports to EC nations, which were critical to its economy, would diminish significantly because it was outside the market.

January 3

      U.S. and Russia sign START II. U.S. Pres. George Bush and Russian Pres. Boris Yeltsin initialed the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) in the Kremlin, an agreement that called for the total elimination of land-based multiple-warhead missiles and a two-thirds reduction in their respective long-range nuclear weapons. Unlike previous arms control negotiations, the details of START II were worked out in just six months. Both the U.S. and Russia agreed that START II would not take effect until all those who had signed START I had ratified the accord and complied with its provisions. Neither Ukraine nor Belarus had as yet ratified the treaty.

January 4

      Daniel arap Moi begins new term. Daniel arap Moi, leader of the Kenya African National Union party, took the oath of office as president of Kenya for the fourth time. According to official tallies, he had won 37% of the popular vote in the controversial December 1992 national election. Moi's closest rival, Kenneth Matiba, leader of a faction within the opposition Forum for the Restoration of Democracy, finished second with 26% of the vote. In the National Assembly, Moi's supporters would hold 97 of the 202 seats even though 15 of Moi's 21 Cabinet ministers had been defeated when they ran for reelection. Matiba and two other leaders of the opposition repudiated the election on the grounds that it had been fraudulent. Observers noted that Moi might not have won reelection if the opposition had joined forces during the campaign.

January 6

      Japan's crown prince picks bride. The Japanese press announced with great fanfare that 32-year-old Crown Prince Naruhito and Masako Owada had become engaged and would marry in early summer. An official announcement from the imperial palace was not expected for several weeks. The two met for the first time at a diplomatic reception in 1986. The 29-year-old future empress, whose father was Japan's vice minister of foreign affairs and the nation's senior career diplomat, had attended Harvard University and the Universities of Tokyo and Oxford before deciding to pursue a career in Japan's Foreign Ministry. In that capacity she had been deeply involved in delicate and highly technical trade negotiations with her U.S. counterparts.

January 12

      Reynolds to lead Irish coalition. The tenure of Albert Reynolds as prime minister of Ireland was extended when the Dail (parliament) approved a new coalition government under the continued leadership of the Fianna Fail party. The Labour Party, led by Dick Spring, joined the government as a junior partner. It was the first time that the two parties had formed such a political alliance. Together they would control 101 of the 166 seats in the Dail. Reynolds began to look for political allies after the November 1992 election, when his conservative party faltered and the left-of-centre Labour Party increased its seats to 33 from 16. Because of Labour's new power, Spring was named deputy prime minister and the country's foreign minister.

      Court halts the trial of Erich Honecker. A German court in Berlin dropped manslaughter charges against Erich Honecker shortly after the Constitutional Court declared that the 80-year-old former leader of East Germany was too ill to stand trial and that his continued detention would be a violation of human rights. Honecker had been accused of ordering East German guards to shoot anyone attempting to flee to West Berlin after the erection of the Berlin Wall. On January 13 a separate court in Berlin dropped charges of embezzlement related to Honecker's alleged use of public funds to build a sumptuous complex for Communist Party officials. After his release from prison, Honecker was allowed to fly to Santiago, Chile, where he was reunited with his wife and daughter on January 14.

January 13

      Religious strife engulfs Bombay. More than 550 persons were reported killed in Bombay, India, during nine days of sectarian violence between Hindus and Muslims. Firemen were attacked with gasoline bombs and stones when they attempted to save burning homes, businesses, and vehicles. Policemen also came under attack when they tried to quell the riots, put an end to looting, and enforce the curfew. The police commissioner described the chaos as "incidents of madness." Order was finally restored with the help of army troops and paramilitary commandos.

      Senate panel issues its final MIA report. The U.S. Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs issued its final report after a 15-month effort to determine the fate of hundreds of U.S. servicemen listed as missing in action during the Vietnam war. The panel concluded that there was no compelling evidence that any U.S. prisoner of war was still being held in Indochina. It also conceded that a small number of Americans who were listed as missing in action in Laos might have been alive and in captivity when the Paris peace accords that ended the war were signed in 1973. Sen. John Kerry, who acted as chairman of the panel, summed up its conclusions by saying: "This report does not close the issue. There is evidence, tantalizing evidence, that raises questions. But questions are not facts and are not proof."

January 15

      Italy apprehends Mafia leader. The Italian police announced that plainclothes paramilitary police in Palermo, Sicily, had apprehended 62-year-old Salvatore Riina, the reputed boss of bosses of organized crime in Italy. Riina, who was unarmed, had been sought by police ever since his 1969 escape from house arrest in Bologna. In 1987 he had been tried in absentia and sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of murder and drug trafficking. He was also believed to have ordered the 1992 assassinations of two prominent prosecutors of organized crime and to have established links with such groups as the Colombian cocaine cartels. Several hundred Mafia informers were said to have contributed significantly to the government's recent successes against organized crime.

January 20

      Clinton becomes U.S. president. William J. Clinton, who had been the longtime Democratic governor of Arkansas, took the oath of office as the 42nd president of the United States. In the November 1992 national election he captured 370 of 538 votes in the electoral college by winning a plurality of the popular vote in 32 states and the District of Columbia. His two major opponents had been the Republican incumbent George Bush and independent Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot. Clinton's running mate during the campaign, Sen. Albert Gore of Tennessee, took his oath as vice president shortly before Clinton was sworn in by William Rehnquist, chief justice of the United States. Justice Byron White administered the oath to Gore because retired justice Thurgood Marshall was too ill to participate.

January 25

      Denmark gets new government. Poul N. Rasmussen, a 49-year-old Social Democrat, became prime minister of Denmark. His four-party coalition government included the Centre Democrats, the Radical Liberals, and the Christian People's Party. All three parties had supported the coalition that had formed Denmark's government before Prime Minister Poul Schluter resigned on January 14 after more than 10 years in office. Niels Petersen, a Radical Liberal, announced that his top priority as foreign minister would be to reverse, in a new referendum, Denmark's June 1992 rejection of the European Community's (EC's) Treaty on European Union. During a December 1992 meeting in Scotland, the EC ministers had agreed to modify the treaty to accommodate certain Danish demands.

      Police kill protesters in Togo. European diplomats reported that at least 20 pro-democracy campaigners had been shot and killed by police in Lomé, the capital of Togo. The stated goal of the demonstrators was to compel the president, Gen. Gnassingbe Eyadema, to end military rule. The tiny West African nation had been under his control for 26 years. Eyadema had tried in vain to end violent antigovernment protests by legalizing opposition political parties in April 1991.

January 27

      Clinton delays decision on gays. White House officials announced that President Clinton had decided to delay issuing an executive order reversing a government policy that banned homosexuals from serving in the armed forces. Although Clinton had promised during the presidential campaign that he would remove the ban if elected, he encountered vigorous opposition from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other military personnel as well as from influential members of Congress. The issue, which was of only marginal importance compared with other critical problems facing the nation, was nonetheless certain to be hotly debated in the mass media and among individuals, both military and civilian.

January 28

      Israeli court backs government. The seven-member Israeli High Court of Justice in Jerusalem ruled unanimously that the government had exercised legitimate powers in December 1992 when it deported 415 Palestinians from the occupied territories to a no-man's land in Lebanon. All the deportees were said to be actively involved with a militant Arab organization called Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement). Such deportations had earlier been condemned by the UN Security Council as violations of international law. Shortly before the Israeli court announced its ruling, UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali had recommended that the council take "whatever measures are required" to enforce its demand that the Palestinians be allowed to return to their homes. On February 1 the Israeli government announced that about 100 Palestinians would be permitted to return and that the remainder would be allowed to return to their homes within a year.

February

February 4

      Help sought to topple Mobutu. Étienne Tshisekedi, prime minister of the central African republic of Zaire, publicly pleaded for foreign help to oust Pres. Mobutu Sese Seko, who had ruled the country for 27 years. Tshisekedi was fired the next day, but it was by no means certain that Mobutu had the authority to dismiss him. Tshisekedi had been elected prime minister by a national conference in August 1992, but his five predecessors had all been appointed by Mobutu and had served for a combined total of less than 18 months. Refusing to relinquish his post, Tshisekedi issued a plea for outside help to establish a new government. The call went out after a week of violence that erupted when soldiers in the capital city of Kinshasa were paid in new large-denomination bank notes that shopkeepers refused to accept. An estimated 1,000 people were killed when the rampaging soldiers clashed with troops loyal to Mobutu.

February 5

      Yeltsin faces strong opposition. Ruslan Khasbulatov, speaker of Russia's Congress of People's Deputies, raised political tensions another notch when he told visiting Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt that Pres. Boris Yeltsin had "failed to cope with his duties." The two had long been on a collision course over where the ultimate power in Russia should rest. Khasbulatov, who had also publicly accused Yeltsin of acting like a dictator, was adamant in his insistence that the will of congress should prevail when the president and the congress were at loggerheads. On more than one occasion, Yeltsin had been forced to compromise because his plan to implement market reforms had been stymied by the congress. The situation was not likely to change as long as hard-line Communists, who had been elected before the demise of the Soviet Union, held the balance of power in the national legislature.

February 6

      Chung Ju Yung faces indictment. Chung Ju Yung, the 77-year-old billionaire founder of one of South Korea's largest conglomerates, was officially charged with slander and with the illegal funding of his ill-fated presidential campaign. In 1992 Chung, a member of the National Assembly, had founded the United People's Party as a vehicle to gain the presidency. He was accused of slandering Kim Young Sam, who won the presidency, when he asserted that Kim had illegally received financial support from the nation's central bank. The government indictment also charged that Chung had diverted more than $60 million from his shipbuilding unit to his campaign coffers and had coerced employees into backing his party.

February 10

      Kuomintang chooses Lien Chan. Leaders of the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) in Taiwan approved Pres. Lee Teng-hui's nomination of Lien Chan as head the Republic of China's Executive Yuan. The post was equivalent to that of premier. With formal approval by the National Assembly a virtual certainty, the government in Taiwan would, for the first time, have native-born Taiwanese serving as both president and premier. The ascendency of locally born politicians was expected to diminish still further the influence of Chinese who had taken refuge in the province of Taiwan when Communist forces gained control of the mainland in 1949.

February 11

      Clinton nominates Janet Reno. Janet Reno, a highly respected 54-year-old state prosecutor in Florida, was nominated by President Clinton to head the Department of Justice as U.S. attorney general. Although Reno had little experience at the federal level, she was an adept administrator and well versed in criminal law. Two earlier nominees, both women, had withdrawn from consideration amid controversies over their employment of illegal aliens for child care. On March 11 the Senate unanimously confirmed Reno's nomination by voice vote. The following day she took the oath of office and became the first woman to head the nation's highest law-enforcement agency.

February 12

      Historic pact in South Africa. The South African government and the African National Congress (ANC) reached agreement on a transitional government of national unity that would end white-minority rule by April 1994. This would occur when South Africans of all races were allowed, for the first time in history, to cast ballots for a new 400-seat assembly. That body would then draw up a new constitution that would stipulate, among other things, how the new government would function. There was already agreement, however, that the nation's future president would be chosen from the party that had gained the most votes in the April 1994 assembly election. As things now stood, Nelson Mandela, the president of the ANC, was expected to fill that role.

February 14

      Greek Cypriots elect Clerides. In an extremely close runoff election, Glafcos Clerides, candidate of the Democratic Rally party, defeated incumbent George Vassiliou in a race for the presidency of Cyprus. Only those living in the southern portion of Cyprus cast votes. The northern third of the island, controlled by Turkish Cypriots since 1974, had been declared a Turkish republic in 1983, but the international community refused to recognize its existence. In the first round of voting on February 7, Clerides won 37% of the popular vote and Vassiliou 44% with the strong support of the Communist Party. In the final round of voting, however, the Democratic Party, which had supported the candidacy of Paschalis Pascalides, gave Clerides the votes he needed to emerge victorious with 50.3% of the total ballots cast.

      Lithuanians elect former Communist. Algirdas Brazauskas, whose Lithuanian Democratic Labour Party had won 73 of the 141 seats in the two-round October-November 1992 parliamentary elections, scored an easy victory in the presidential race by capturing 60% of the popular vote. His opponent, Stasys Lozoraitis, represented the Lithuanian Reform Movement (Sajudis), which held 30 seats in the Supreme Council (parliament). Brazauskas, the former Communist leader of Lithuania, campaigned on a promise to revitalize the nation's foundering industries by fostering closer trade relations with Russia and other former Soviet republics. One of his most urgent priorities was to secure a source of cheaper energy.

February 22

      UN backs trial for war crimes. Faced with mounting evidence of unspeakable atrocities taking place in what had been Yugoslavia, the UN Security Council unanimously sanctioned the formation of an international court to try those accused of committing war crimes during the civil conflict. UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali was asked to determine the legal structure of the proposed court. Outside observers, including members of the European Community and the U.S., roundly condemned the barbarous manner in which civilians as well as combatants were being treated. Although all parties in the civil war—Serbs, Croats, and Muslims—were taken to task for their inhumane behaviour, the severest criticism was leveled at the Serbs, whose military might was vastly superior to that of their adversaries. Whether any of those guilty of war crimes could be identified, apprehended, and brought to trial was by no means certain.

February 24

      Canadian prime minister resigns. After eight and a half years in office, Brian Mulroney resigned as prime minister of Canada and as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party. With his personal popularity rating standing at a miserable 17%, Mulroney was widely believed to have tendered his resignation in order to improve his party's prospects in the next general election, which by law had to be held by November.

February 25

      Kim Young Sam assumes office. Former dissident Kim Young Sam took the oath of office in Seoul as president of South Korea. Unlike his most recent predecessors, Kim had no ties to the military. During his inaugural address Kim pledged to eradicate political corruption and misconduct, which he called "the most terrifying enemies attacking the foundations of our society." Potential targets of the planned anticorruption campaign included members of Kim's own Democratic Liberal Party. The president also promised to take steps to invigorate the nation's stagnant economy and to work for the eventual reunification of the Korean peninsula. When Kim named his entire 26-member Cabinet on February 26, he broke with tradition by including three women. Ten days later the president summarily dismissed three of his ministers when rumours circulated that they had engaged in activities deemed unbefitting members of the new administration.

February 26

      New York Trade Center bombed. A horrendous midday explosion in a parking garage on the second subterranean level beneath one of the twin World Trade Center buildings in lower Manhattan killed at least five people and left a 60-m (200-ft)-wide crater several stories deep. Because of dense smoke and the lack of electrical power, it took some six hours to evacuate an estimated 50,000 people from the building. On March 4 police arrested Mohammad Salameh, a 26-year-old Jordanian-born Palestinian, when he returned to a car-rental agency in New Jersey to reclaim the $400 deposit he had paid when he rented the van that investigators said had been used to transport the explosives to the garage. FBI agents also found evidence of bomb making when they searched Salameh's apartment. On March 10 Nidal Ayyad, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian with a degree in chemical engineering, was arrested in New Jersey and charged with aiding and abetting the bombing. As the investigation continued, the FBI was reportedly gathering evidence against other suspects. Observers noted that the World Trade Center bombing brought violence attributed to Islamic fundamentalists to U.S. territory for the first time.

February 28

      Food drops aid Bosnian Muslims. U.S. Air Force planes began air-dropping food and other supplies desperately needed by Muslims under attack from Serb forces in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The unilateral U.S. mission had been ordered by President Clinton, who underscored the humanitarian nature of the operation and promised that priorities for the air deliveries would be decided "without regard to ethnic or religious affiliation." Although airlifts were admittedly an expensive and relatively ineffective way to deliver supplies, there was some hope that the use of aircraft would open up land routes that had been closed and possibly improve the prospects for a negotiated peace.

March

March 5

      WMO reports ozone depletion. The World Meteorological Organization reported that ozone levels over northern Europe and Canada had fallen 20% below normal. A few days later an independent Canadian study was released showing that the current ozone levels over Edmonton, Alta., and Toronto were the lowest in some 30 years. Because ozone in the atmosphere protects the Earth from the harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation emitted by the Sun, members of the European Community had agreed in December 1992 to end the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were a major cause of ozone depletion. They set January 1995 as their deadline. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., the largest producer of CFCs, joined the campaign by announcing that by the end of 1994 it too would end its production of CFCs.

March 6

      Kanemaru is taken into custody. Shin Kanemaru, widely viewed as the most powerful member of Japan's ruling Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP), was arrested by federal prosecutors in Tokyo on suspicion of income-tax evasion. Investigators, who on March 9 found millions of dollars' worth of undisclosed assets in Kanemaru's house and office, estimated that the 78-year-old veteran politician had concealed more than $10 million in income that he had allegedly used in the late 1980s to buy discount bonds. Kanemaru's arrest was but the latest item on a growing list of financial scandals plaguing the LDP and eroding confidence in the government. He was formally indicted on March 13, one day before the five-year statute of limitations was due to expire.

March 7

      Tentative peace in Afghanistan. A peace plan designed to end the civil war in Afghanistan was signed in Islamabad, Pak., by eight of the rival military factions. The agreement, brokered by Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, was reaffirmed in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on March 11. According to the terms of the peace accord, Afghan Pres. Burhanuddin Rabbani would remain in office and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the Hezb-i-Islami organization, would become prime minister. The two would then share power for 18 months until elections were held. The 14-year-old communist regime of Pres. Mohammad Najibullah had finally collapsed in April 1992. Since then, an estimated 5,000 Afghans had been killed as rival groups sought to establish control over Kabul, the capital, and over other regions of the war-ravaged country. Despite the positive outcome of the latest peace negotiations, there were a variety of reasons to wonder if the truce would be any more permanent than those that had failed in the past.

      Swiss to permit high stakes in casinos. Swiss voters, who had been allowed since 1956 to engage in legal small-scale gambling, overwhelmingly approved a referendum that reversed an 1874 ban on high-stakes casino gambling. Those who favoured the change, which would benefit the nation's social security programs, pointed out that other European countries had increased government revenues significantly through such means. The Swiss government's share of the gambling profits was expected to be nearly $100 million annually.

March 11

      Suharto begins his sixth term. Indonesian President Suharto took the oath of office for the sixth consecutive time one day after being unanimously reelected to another five-year term by the People's Consultative Assembly. Suharto, who had already begun relaxing government controls over many aspects of Indonesian life, had promised even greater freedom in the months ahead. Two months before the formal election, the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party had endorsed Suharto's reelection even though it had campaigned for change, including electoral reforms and the eradication of corruption in government. Try Sutrisno, who had retired as commander of the armed forces on February 17, was elected vice president. The choice of Sutrisno was reportedly dictated by high-ranking military officers. It seemed clear that no matter what other changes came to pass, the military would remain a potent force in Indonesian politics.

March 12

      Bombs set off in Indian cities. The first in a series of early afternoon bombings in western India destroyed several floors of the 29-story Bombay Stock Exchange and killed some 50 people. Within the next hour or so, bombs in other parts of the city wreaked havoc on banks, movie theatres, an airline office, and a shopping complex. Five days later, in what appeared to be an unrelated incident, two apartment buildings in Calcutta were destroyed by a bomb, with the loss of at least 80 lives. On March 19 another bomb exploded at a Calcutta train station. All told, more than 300 people were killed and more than 2,000 injured in what authorities called the worse wave of criminal violence in India's history. No individual or organization claimed responsibility for the atrocities, but on March 15 the Bombay police charged a 26-year-old Hindu and a 30-year-old Muslim with direct involvement in the bombings. Both, however, managed to escape. Political commentators publicly speculated that the terrorist acts were an attempt to destabilize the government of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao.

      North Korea withdraws from NNP treaty. The North Korean government announced that it was withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which it had signed in 1985. Pyongyang cited Article X of the treaty, which permitted any signatory to give a 90-day notice of its intention to withdraw if it felt its "supreme interests" were being jeopardized. The aim of the international agreement was to inhibit nuclear arms sales and the spread of technology needed to manufacture nuclear weapons. The North Korean announcement came at a time when the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN-affiliated organization, was insisting on its right to inspect several facilities in North Korea that were suspected of having acquired the capacity to produce weapons-grade plutonium. It was certain that North Korea would be immediately subjected to intense international pressure to reverse its decision and adhere to the provisions of the treaty.

March 13

      Australians back Labor Party. Australian voters, obliged by law to cast ballots in the national election, returned the ruling Australian Labor Party (ALP) to power for a record fifth consecutive three-year term. The ALP was led by Paul Keating, who had succeeded in ousting Bob Hawke as party leader in December 1991. Incomplete election returns indicated that the ALP's victory over the Liberal Party-National Party coalition would increase its majority from 6 to perhaps 16 in the 147-seat House of Representatives. Numerous political pundits had expected the ALP to be unseated because the nation's economy was moribund and Australia's unemployment rate was the highest it had been since the 1930s.

      President Diouf reelected in Senegal. The constitutional court in Senegal announced that Pres. Abdou Diouf had won the February 21 presidential election with 58.4% of the popular vote. Diouf, the leader of the Socialist Party and the current president of the Organization of African Unity, had ruled the West African republic since 1981. His closest rival in the eight-candidate race was the Senegalese Democratic Party candidate, Abdoulaye Wade, who officially garnered 32% of the vote. The official results were not announced earlier because the court had to respond to complaints from Diouf's opponents that the election had been rigged.

March 14

      Andorra opts for a new system. Voters in Andorra, an independent principality between France and Spain, massively supported a referendum that called for the end of a seven-century-old feudal system of government and the creation of one having separate executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. Under its new constitution, Andorra would qualify for membership in international organizations, and its citizens would be free to form political parties and labour unions. In the past the tiny country of some 57,000 people had been jointly ruled by the president of France and the Roman Catholic bishop living in a nearby Spanish town. Their roles in the new government structure would be drastically reduced.

March 20

      Rwanda moves closer to peace. Leaders of the Rwandan Patriotic Front and rival government officials accepted two proposals that would, if implemented, merge government troops and rebel forces into a single army. The negotiations took place in Arusha, Tanzania. The Tutsi rebels had taken up arms to enforce a demand that the majority Hutu tribe stop its alleged oppression of Tutsi. A spokesman for the International Red Cross reported that the fighting had forced up to one million civilians to flee their homes.

March 21

      Commandos release all hostages. Five Nicaraguan gunmen released the last of about two dozen hostages they had seized in the Nicaraguan embassy in San José, the capital of Costa Rica. After long negotiations, the commandos agreed to accept only $250,000 of the millions they had originally demanded and a guarantee of safe passage out of the country. José Manuel Urbina Lara, who had led the embassy takeover, sought and received political asylum for himself and one companion in the Dominican Republic. The three other gunmen chose a location inside Nicaragua. The gunmen's chief complaint was that Pres. Violeta Chamorro had betrayed her supporters by leaving Sandinistas in high government positions after ousting them from power in the 1990 election. Among those they demanded be discharged was Gen. Humberto Ortega, a Sandinista who commanded the nation's army.

March 27

      Algeria cuts official ties to Iran. Algeria formally severed diplomatic relations with Iran for allegedly supporting the terrorists who had assassinated Algerian government and military officials in an attempt to destabilize the country. In January 1992 the military had seized power in Algeria to prevent the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) from establishing an Islamic state. The FIS had seemed on the verge of taking over the government in December 1991 when a vast number of its candidates won parliamentary seats outright and thus avoided a runoff election. Before the final round of the elections could be held in January, the military declared an emergency, forced the president to resign, and canceled the January election showdown. The FIS was outlawed and thousands of militant extremists arrested, but others associated with the FIS had been able to carry out a successful urban campaign of assassinations. Algerian officials pointed the finger of blame at Iran.

March 28

      Yeltsin escapes impeachment. During a special session of Russia's Congress of People's Deputies, Pres. Boris Yeltsin survived political attack when his adversaries were unable to persuade two-thirds of the assembly to vote for his ouster. With both factions in the power struggle constantly shifting positions and offering compromises, the country was in turmoil. Until there was a clear-cut division of power between the president and the legislature, there would be no mutually acceptable way to resolve the impasse.

March 29

      Socialists battered in French vote. After his Socialist Party suffered a stunning defeat in parliamentary elections on March 21 and 28, French Pres. François Mitterrand was forced to name a member of the opposition as prime minister. It would be the second time in 12 years that Mitterrand's Socialist government had to accept "cohabitation" with a member of the political opposition. Mitterrand chose 63-year-old Édouard Balladur, who had been named minister of finance by Prime Minister Jacques Chirac in 1986 and, like Chirac, was a member of the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR) party. For the Socialist Party, the election was nothing short of disastrous. The RPR and the Union for French Democracy coalition won a combined total of 460 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly, and conservative independents won an additional 24. When the dust cleared, the Socialists had lost more than 75% of the seats they had held in the previous assembly. With all eyes focused on the presidential election in 1995, the field was wide open for presidential aspirants because Balladur had said that he had no interest in joining the race.

March 31

      Patterson scores an easy victory. Percival Patterson was guaranteed a full term as prime minister of Jamaica when his People's National Party captured 52 of the 60 seats in the House of Representatives while receiving 61% of the popular vote. Patterson had replaced Michael Manley when he was forced to resign in March 1992 because of poor health. The Jamaica Labour Party, led by former prime minister Edward Seaga, was severely weakened, losing 6 of the 14 seats it had previously held in the national legislature. Despite sporadic violence and reports of widespread irregularities at the polls, the turmoil was insignificant compared with the 1980 election, when some 750 people were reported killed.

      Jiang Zemin given a second position. The nearly 3,000 members of China's National People's Congress adjourned a two-week meeting after giving 67-year-old Jiang Zemin (Chiang Tse-min), the general secretary of the Communist Party of China, the additional post of president. He succeeded Yang Shangkun (Yang Shang-k'un). The legislators also reelected Li Peng (Li P'eng) to a second five-year term as premier. Although 88-year-old Deng Xiaoping (Teng Hsiao-p'ing) held no party or government posts, he continued to exercise unchallenged power to set policy and make appointments. One of his decisions had been the selection of Jiang as his successor. Jiang was also chairman of the central military commission. The fact that Jiang did not possess Deng's natural gifts for leadership and had no true power base of his own created speculation about China's future leadership.

April

April 2

      Lesotho turns against military. The tiny South African kingdom of Lesotho returned to parliamentary government when 74-year-old Ntsu Mokhehle took the oath of office as the nation's first civilian head of government in 23 years. In the March 27 election, Mokhehle's Basotho Congress Party (BCP) won all 65 seats in the National Assembly and complete control of the Senate. The BCP had also been victorious in the 1970 national election, but leaders of the Basotho National Party had voided the results, declared a state of emergency, and suspended the constitution. After Gen. Justin Lekhanya's successful military coup in 1986, the country was ruled by a military council.

April 5

      Ramos pushes electrical output. Philippine Pres. Fidel Ramos received emergency powers for one year to deal with a dire electrical power shortage throughout the country. Manila, the capital, with a population of nearly two million people, was especially hard hit. Many businesses had to curtail their working hours, and domestic life for many was in constant turmoil. Invoking his new authority, Ramos could begin awarding contracts for new electricity-generating plants without public bids. He could also reorganize the state-owned electrical company and use gambling casino revenues to fund new desperately needed power projects.

April 8

      Macedonia enters United Nations. The United Nations welcomed a new nation into the organization under the strange provisional name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Greece had vigorously opposed use of the simple name Macedonia because, it said, the newly independent republic had designs on the neighbouring Greek region of Macedonia. Officials on both sides agreed to search for an appropriate permanent name. Meanwhile, by mutual consent, the new nation would not hoist its flag outside the UN headquarters or at any UN agency because Greece objected to its design. The flag's sunlike disk with 16 rays had been a symbol of Alexander the Great, who ruled Greece in the 4th century BC.

April 10

      Gunman murders African leader. Chris Hani, the 50-year-old leader of South Africa's Communist Party and a charismatic member of the African National Congress (ANC), was shot and killed outside his home near Johannesburg. The police quickly arrested Janusz Walus, a Polish immigrant whose car had been seen leaving the scene of the crime. Walus was said to be a violently anticommunist member of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, a militant group of whites opposed to black majority rule in South Africa. Black anger before and after Hani's funeral on April 19 was to a great extent muffled by ANC crowd-control marshals and by pleas for calm from Nelson Mandela, president of the ANC.

April 15

      Sex survey revises gay statistics. The Allen Guttmacher Institute published the results of a national sex survey conducted by the Battelle Human Affairs Research Center in Seattle, Wash., involving 3,321 U.S. males between the ages of 20 and 39. It was the most comprehensive sex survey since the Kinsey Report of 1948 and reached conclusions that closely corresponded to similar recent surveys carried out in Great Britain, Denmark, and France. The most surprising finding, which became the focus of most news reports, was that males who described themselves as exclusively homosexual made up only 1% of the population. For decades it had been assumed that the 10% figure given by Kinsey was relatively accurate.

April 17

      Two police convicted in beating. A federal jury in Los Angeles convicted two white policemen and acquitted two others on charges that they had violated the civil rights of Rodney King. In March 1991, after a wild, high-speed car chase, King was savagely beaten while being subdued by police and taken into custody. When the jury informed the court that verdicts had been reached, police and national guardsmen fanned out across the tense city. The next morning, during a live nationwide telecast, the verdicts were read one by one. The first two policemen were found guilty of violating King's civil rights; the other two were acquitted. Tensions eased almost instantly as it became clear that there would be no repetition of the horrendous riots that had erupted in 1992 when a state jury acquitted all four policemen of assault. Efforts to avoid a second trial on the grounds that the four policemen would be subjected to double jeopardy were futile because the state and federal governments represented different jurisdictions and charged the men with different crimes.

April 18

      Khan dismisses prime minister. Pakistani Pres. Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and dissolved the National Assembly, but he did not announce a date for new elections. Sharif was ousted, as had been Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 1990, for alleged corruption and mismanagement. Once in office, Sharif began reversing Bhutto's socialist policies by welcoming foreign investment and selling off unprofitable state-owned enterprises. One of Sharif's more risky political maneuvers was an attempt to weaken the presidency. The incumbent, who was chosen by the Senate and by the national and four provincial legislatures, had the power to dismiss the prime minister and the national and provincial legislatures. He also appointed the chief of staff of the armed forces.

April 19

      Standoff in Waco ends in tragedy. A 51-day standoff between federal agents and members of a Christian religious cult ended in tragedy when the cult compound near Waco, Texas, burned to the ground. David Koresh, the 33-year-old leader of the Branch Davidians and the cult's self-styled messiah, perished along with at least 74 others, at least 17 of whom were believed to be young children. The first act in the drama occurred on February 28 when four federal agents were shot and killed during an assault on the heavily armed compound. Earlier requests to enter the grounds to investigate charges of child abuse had been denied. After weeks of chaotic negotiations and no evidence that the talks were leading anywhere, federal agents were ordered to end the stalemate. Using special equipment, they rammed holes in the compound's walls and sprayed nonflammable tear gas through the openings. As soon as the cultists realized an assault was under way, some began racing about setting the compound ablaze. The intense heat and the extent of the conflagration were more than the firefighters could handle. Medical examiners reported that Koresh and others had been shot through the head, and many may have died by their own hand.

April 21

      Brazil votes to keep presidency. In a binding national plebiscite, Brazilians overwhelmingly approved a republican form of government over a monarchy (68% to 12%) and preferred, by a margin of better than 2-1, to retain their current presidential form of government; the alternative would have been an elected parliament. In preelection surveys pollsters discovered that numerous voters had no clear understanding of the constitutional issues they were supposed to decide; some 20% of the voters, who were required by law to go to the polls, cast blank or incorrectly marked ballots. The voting went forward because the pro-monarchists and pro-parliamentarian members of the National Congress had succeeded in making the plebiscite mandatory under the 1988 constitution.

April 24

      Eritreans approve independence. More than 99% of the voting citizens of the Ethiopian province of Eritrea approved a referendum calling for total independence. Isaias Afwerki, one of Eritrea's most prominent leaders, announced that formal independence would be declared on May 24, the second anniversary of the final victory of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front over Ethiopia's armed forces. The war for independence had lasted nearly 30 years and had claimed the lives of some 100,000 Eritreans. On April 22 Isaias had told reporters that he considered five years too short a time to prepare properly for civilian rule.

      London rocked by huge IRA bomb. A huge bomb concealed in a parked construction truck was detonated in central London by Irish Republican Army terrorists. Because the financial district was relatively deserted on weekend mornings, only one person was killed, but more than 40 were injured. The damage to buildings over several square blocks was so severe that the chief executive of an insurance company estimated the loss at more than $1.5 billion.

April 26

      Italy gets new prime minister. Carlo Ciampi, the head of Italy's central bank, was named prime minister by Pres. Oscar Scalfaro. Ciampi, who became Italy's first head of government chosen from outside of Parliament, succeeded Giuliano Amato, who had resigned on April 22. Amato's Socialist Party and the long-dominant Christian Democratic Party were both caught up in a nationwide corruption scandal of such proportions that a week earlier Italian voters had angrily annulled a series of laws, including one on proportional voting, that disassembled much of the nation's current political structure.

May

May 1

      Sri Lankan president is slain. During a May Day political rally in Colombo, Sri Lankan Pres. Ranasinghe Premadasa was killed along with most of his bodyguards and several aides when a man detonated explosives strapped to his body. A week earlier Lalith Athulathmudali, the country's leading opposition politician, had been shot and killed by an unknown gunman. Although no one came forward to take responsibility for the president's assassination, suspicion quickly focused on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who had used suicide assassins in the past to kill government officials. For years the Tigers had used terrorism as a weapon to reinforce their demand that the region of Sri Lanka that they called home be granted independence. The Tigers were also blamed for the murder of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 because he had sent Indian troops to Sri Lanka to help curb the violence of the rebel Tigers.

      Despondent politician takes his life. Pierre Bérégovoy, who had been prime minister of France until the Socialists suffered a humiliating defeat in the March parliamentary elections, died after shooting himself in the head. Colleagues reported that he had been deeply depressed over charges of personal financial improprieties while he held office and was distressed by charges that his handling of the national economy had been a disaster. Earlier in his career, Bérégovoy had won respect as France's finance minister. He held the position twice as a member of Pres. François Mitterrand's Cabinet, first from 1984 to 1986 and then from 1988 to 1992.

May 4

      Cristiani begins to purge army. Alfredo Cristiani, president of El Salvador, bowed to intense international pressure and began relieving 15 top army officers of their commands. Two were removed. After completing its investigation, a civilian commission had called for the dismissal of 102 officers on grounds that they had flagrantly violated human rights. Cristiani, however, apparently had tried to assuage the anger of powerful military figures by announcing that some of the officers could not be discharged until 1994 at the earliest, even though the UN-sponsored peace accord he had accepted specifically ordered a purge of certain top military personnel. Their number included Gen. René Emilio Ponce, the defense minister, whose name headed the list because allegedly, among other human rights atrocities, he had ordered the murders of six Jesuit priests in November 1989.

May 9

      Paraguay holds first free vote. Politicians of various persuasions came together and agreed that, despite confirmed cases of fraud at the polls, Pres. Juan Carlos Wasmosy of the ruling Colorado Party had clearly won the first democratic election in the nation's 182-year history. Domingo Laíno, candidate of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party, garnered about 3% fewer votes than Wasmosy. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, whose delegation from the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs had checked nearly 2,000 polling stations, agreed that the official margin of victory was sufficient to offset any impact fraud might have played in the final tallies. The Colorado Party also won a majority in Congress and most of the state governorships, but it no longer held the country in a viselike grip. As Carter was quick to point out, opposition candidates collectively won almost 60% of the total vote.

May 13

      Japan's whaling plan is rejected. The International Whaling Commission, during an annual meeting in Kyoto, Japan, rejected a proposal that would have allowed certain Japanese to engage in restricted whaling in their coastal waters. Japan proposed that four of its whaling communities be allowed to harvest 50 minke whales a year along Japan's coast to sustain their traditional culture and support their livelihood. The plan did not advocate the resumption of commercial hunting. For a number of years the regulatory body had reconsidered its position, then voted to continue the ban on limited whaling. Ten member nations supported Japan's proposal, 16 opposed it, and 6 abstained. Because there was little likelihood that the commission would lift its moratorium on commercial whaling in the foreseeable future, Norway was seriously considering withdrawing from the organization.

May 18

      Danes approve union with Europe. Danish voters, who had rejected participation in the Treaty on European Union by a fraction of a percentage point in June 1992, solidly supported a revised treaty in a new referendum. Anger in some quarters was so intense after the results were announced that the police, who were generally very restrained, felt compelled to fire at leftist demonstrators, who hurled tons of cobblestones and rocks at them, barricaded a main thoroughfare, set bonfires, and smashed windows in commercial buildings. Ten or more protesters were reported to have been hit by bullets, and several dozen police officers had to be hospitalized overnight after being treated for injuries. The antigovernment riot was described as the most serious in decades. The balloting in Denmark was closely followed in other European countries because all 12 members of the European Community had to approve the treaty for it to take effect. A major objective of the treaty had been to establish a common currency by 1999. The referendum approved in Denmark, however, did not oblige the country to accept a single currency, nor did it require acceptance of a joint defense policy, European citizenship, or common immigration and judicial policies.

May 19

      United States recognizes Angola. The United States officially recognized the government of Angola, in part to entice the rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) to continue peace negotiations with the democratically elected government of Pres. José Eduardo dos Santos. The U.S. decision marked a dramatic change in its relations with Angola, which had previously been ruled by a Marxist regime reinforced by thousands of Cuban troops. On May 21, when the UN-sponsored peace talks ended in failure, there was not only little immediate hope for a cease-fire but expectation that the fighting would intensify. Among many differences separating the two sides was the question of who, under a cease-fire agreement, would control the territory captured by the rebels after fighting resumed in October 1992.

May 20

      Britain ratifies European treaty. Members of Britain's House of Commons ratified the Treaty on European Union by a vote of 292-112. After more than 200 hours of debate, Britain became the 12th and final member of the European Community to support greater interdependence among members of the organization. The leaders of Britain's Labour Party had urged its members to abstain when the final vote was taken, but 66 Labourities joined 41 Conservatives in casting negative votes. In a matter of weeks, the bill would be discussed in the House of Lords, where the strength of the opposition was not considered a major impediment to ratification.

May 21

      Venezuelan president indicted. Venezuela's Senate voted unanimously to authorize the Supreme Court to put Pres. Carlos Andrés Pérez on trial for allegedly embezzling and misappropriating some $17 million in government funds. After the vote was taken, Octavio Lepage, the president of the Senate, automatically became the nation's acting president. Within 30 days the national congress was required to elect an interim president to serve until February 1994, when Pérez's five-year term expired. As leader of Venezuela's 35-year-old civilian democracy—the oldest in South America—Pérez had taken steps to establish a free-market economy. With his indictment, there was concern at home and abroad that Pérez's policies might stagnate under his successors or even be reversed.

May 24

      Tibetans protest Chinese rule. Tibetans in the capital city of Lhasa took to the streets to protest high inflation and the lifting of price controls on food, but as the crowd swelled, the march turned into an antigovernment protest with shouts of "Chinese get out of Tibet." Eyewitnesses reported that the demonstration, one of the most serious acts of political defiance in years, was quelled by salvos of tear gas. Those at the scene reported that the area was so tense that Chinese police were patrolling the streets with machine guns.

May 26

      Fragile peace pact in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan and Armenia accepted in principle a UN Security Council resolution aimed at ending the fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave in Azerbaijan heavily populated by Christian Armenians. Nagorno-Karabakh had earlier proclaimed independence from Azerbaijan, but no nation accorded it diplomatic recognition. Russia, Turkey, and the U.S. participated in the latest peace talks in Moscow, which ended with many basic issues still unsettled. Negotiations, however, were scheduled to resume soon in Geneva.

      Jordan turns its back on Iraqi leader. King Hussein of Jordan, who had supported Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq and Persian Gulf wars, told members of the national press that he could no longer support Saddam Hussein or his policies because they had deeply harmed Jordanian interests. Jordan's multiple complaints against Iraq included its harsh suppression of dissidents, especially Shi'ite Iraqis, and its refusal to abide by conditions of the Gulf war peace accord it had signed. Iraq had also halted its shipment of free oil to Jordan, an arrangement that had been acceptable to both parties as a way for Iraq to pay off old debts. Iraq had also resorted to financial manipulations to inflict severe damage on Jordanian banks and bankrupt Jordanian businessmen. By distancing himself from Saddam Hussein, the king also moved a step closer to reconciliation with other Arab nations that had joined forces with the U.S. to drive Saddam Hussein's troops out of Kuwait.

May 27

      Bomb devastates Uffizi Gallery. Priceless works of art were either destroyed or damaged when a powerful car bomb exploded outside the famed Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Five persons were reported killed and 26 wounded by the blast. Authorities said they were certain that terrorists or the Mafia were responsible for the attack, but no evidence had yet been found to support this presumption. Art experts considered the Uffizi collection of 13th- to 18th-century paintings one of the finest in all of Europe. The day after the explosion, a huge crowd gathered in Florence's Piazza Santa Croce to protest the wanton destruction of Italy's cultural and artistic patrimony.

May 29

      Five Turks die in Germany. Two young women and three young girls were burned to death in Solingen, Germany, when an arsonist firebombed the home their family had occupied for many years. Authorities suspected that right-wing neo-Nazi extremists had committed the murders. Three days earlier the Bundestag had voted to restrict the nation's political asylum laws, which were among the most liberal in the world. Critics of the change claimed that the vote was proof that the government had capitulated to right-wing extremists who had been carrying on a campaign of violence against foreigners. During a memorial service on June 3, the mayor of Solingen spoke for thousands of German mourners when he said: "We are horrified. We are deeply ashamed. We ask for forgiveness."

June

June 1

      Pres. Dobrica Cosic loses office. Members of Yugoslavia's Radical Party, with the support of Socialist members of the Federal Assembly, voted to depose Pres. Dobrica Cosic after accusing him of having violated the constitution by delaying the appointments of a prime minister and Supreme Court justices after he assumed office in June 1992. When the Chamber of Citizens voted on the evening of May 31, 75 supported Cosic's ouster, 30 opposed it, and 10 abstained. The next morning in the Chamber of Republics, the vote was 22-10 against Cosic; 4 delegates abstained and 4 were absent. Cosic had angered members of the Radical Party and other extreme Serbian nationalists when he urged ethnic Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina to accept a proposed international peace plan that was designed to end the horrendous slaughter of defenseless noncombatants. The most extreme partisans of Serbian nationalism, on the other hand, were urging the Bosnian Serbs to continue fighting and to seize as much territory as possible in Bosnia, which had been part of Yugoslavia before its disintegration.

June 3

      Norodom Sihanouk regains power. After decades of conflict, peace finally appeared to have come to Cambodia when Hun Sen, prime minister of the Vietnamese-installed government, recognized 70-year-old Norodom Sihanouk as the head of a new coalition government. Sihanouk, who had been the nation's monarch until he was toppled in 1970, would be prime minister, supreme commander of the armed forces, and head of state. The slow process toward peace had gained momentum with the establishment of a 12-member, four-faction Supreme National Council that by mutual agreement would rule the country under the chairmanship of Sihanouk while preparations were made for a UN-sponsored and supervised general election. After six days of voting that began on May 23, the country was still in political turmoil. The royal opposition, led by Prince Norodom Ranariddh, Sihanouk's son, finished first in the balloting; Hun Sen's party was second. Because Norodom Ranariddh and his brother Norodom Chakrapong, a ranking official in the Vietnamese-installed government, openly detested each other, their father was able to exploit their antagonism and persuade both to support his return to power. Ranariddh then changed his mind and agreed to become part of a coalition government. Both he and Hun Sen were named deputy prime ministers. The Khmer Rouge, which during Pol Pot's reign of terror in the late 1970's had caused the deaths of at least one million Cambodians, remained a menace because they had refused to lay down their arms or participate in the election, which they had no hope of winning.

June 5

      UN peacekeepers die in Somalia. More than a score of Pakistani soldiers serving with the UN peacekeeping force in Somalia were slain in Mogadishu, the capital, in a series of attacks. Some died when Somalis ambushed a contingent of UN soldiers returning from a routine inspection of weapons depots controlled by Gen. Muhammad Farah Aydid, the most daring and belligerent of the local warlords. Others were killed by sniper fire at a feeding station where they were serving as security guards. U.S. helicopters responded to the murders by bombing three of Aydid's munitions dumps; they also destroyed armoured vehicles and artillery pieces. On June 6 the UN Security Council called for the "arrest and detention for prosecution, trial, and punishment" of those responsible for the attacks.

      Latvians vote in parliamentary election. Latvians began casting ballots in the country's first parliamentary election since it became independent of the Soviet Union in 1991. The main issue facing the electorate during the two-day electoral process was the future status of Russian nationals who had streamed into Latvia after it was absorbed by the Soviet Union in 1940. Most Russians were not allowed to participate in the election. Latvia's Way, a centrist group under the leadership of Anatolijs Gorbunovs, won a plurality of 36 seats in the 100-seat Saeima (parliament) and 32.4% of the popular vote. Latvia's Way was expected to form a three-party coalition that included the Latvian Farmers' Union, which finished in fourth place with 12 seats in the Saeima.

June 6

      Guatemala elects president. Ramiro de Léon Carpio, a crusader for human rights and a frequent critic of the military, was sworn in as president of Guatemala. The following day De Léon demanded the resignation of Defense Minister Gen. José Domingo García Samayoa and reassigned other top military commanders. On May 25 García and other high-ranking officers had backed Pres. Jorge Serrano Elías' seizure of near dictatorial powers. With the country lurching toward chaos, leading politicians, businessmen, and civic groups came together to urge a countercoup by conservative military officers. Serrano was then ousted, and the way was paved for the restoration of democracy. On June 4 the same civilian alliance that had forced the ouster of Serrano refused to accept Vice Pres. Gustavo Espina Saiguero as Serrano's successor. The following day the national Congress, which had been dissolved by Serrano, reconvened and chose De Léon to head the government.

      Gonzáles wins Spanish election. Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzáles was assured of another term in office when his Socialist Party won a plurality of seats in the Congress of Deputies. It was the fourth consecutive victory for the Socialists. The conservative Popular Party, however, made substantial gains under the leadership of José María Aznar and prevented the Socialists from winning an absolute majority. Early returns indicated that the Socialists had won 38.8% of the popular vote, the Popular Party 34.8%, and the United Left 9.5%. After viewing the results, Gonzáles conceded that the message from the electorate was clear: the people wanted change. Improving the situation, however, presented a difficult challenge because the country was beset with serious economic problems, including an unemployment rate exceeding 21%.

      U.S. seizes ship carrying illegal aliens. Nearly 300 Chinese aliens were taken into custody by U.S. officials in New York after the ship used to smuggle them to the United States ran aground off the coast of New York City. At least six of those attempting to gain illegal entry into the U.S. drowned in the cold ocean water when they tried to reach shore in early-morning darkness. During interviews ashore, various passengers reported that the smugglers had demanded as much as $35,000 to transport each alien from Bangkok, Thailand, to New York by way of the Indian and Atlantic oceans. Until the debts were paid in full, the fate of their families back home was very precarious. Officials of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service said that the agency would oppose the granting of asylum to any of the illegal immigrants. All were being held in various federal detention centres until their cases were reviewed. On June 7 the captain of the Golden Venture and 10 of its crew were charged in a federal district court with conspiring to smuggle illegal aliens into the country.

      Skeptical Bolivian voters go to the polls. Bolivian voters went to the polls to elect a president and a congress, but many expressed their disillusionment with the electoral process. As expected, none of the presidential candidates received a majority of the popular vote, so once again the legislature was free to choose any candidate as president when it convened on August 6. On June 9, however, former dictator Gen. Hugo Banzer conceded defeat, and Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, who had won a plurality of the popular vote in the election, was assured of the presidency. Sánchez, who represented the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement party, had also won a plurality in the 1989 election, but he could not muster sufficient support in the backroom bargaining that followed to win the presidency. As chief executive, Sánchez was expected to invest the country's Indian population with significantly greater political power and to continue pursuing the free-market policies he had introduced in 1985 as the nation's minister of planning.

June 9

      Japan celebrates a royal wedding. In a solemn Shinto ritual carried out behind the walls of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, 33-year-old Crown Prince Naruhito and 29-year-old Masako Owada were united in matrimony. None of the 900 Japanese dignitaries in attendance, much less any of the millions who watched on television, was allowed to view the ancient ceremony, which began in the inner sanctuary of the shrine. Tradition also dictated that the reigning emperor and the empress be absent. Most of the hundreds of thousands who later cheered the newlyweds during their 30-minute ride through the streets of Tokyo were aware that, unlike any other former empress, Naruhito's bride had abandoned a highly successful professional career in the Foreign Ministry to become a member of the royal family.

June 13

      Woman to lead Turkish republic. During an emergency meeting of Turkey's ruling True Path Party, an overwhelming number of delegates chose Tansu Ciller as their new party leader. She replaced Suleyman Demirel, who had vacated the post to assume the presidency after the death of Pres. Turgut Ozal on April 17. Ciller was later formally named prime minister by Demirel and was the first woman to hold the post. The True Path Party currently headed a coalition government with the Social Democratic Populist Party as a junior partner.

June 14

      Malawians want major changes. A substantial majority of the Malawians who cast votes in a nonbinding referendum calling for the establishment of a multiparty democracy rejected the one-party government of Pres. Kamuzu Banda. The autocratic ruler had assumed power in the small southeastern African nation after leading it to independence from Britain in 1964. Banda's critics accused him of, among other things, imprisoning, torturing, and murdering his political foes and looting the national treasury. John Tembo, Malawi's minister of state and leader of the Malawi Congress Party, was also targeted as the power behind the throne. In October 1992 Banda had agreed to hold a referendum after a series of strikes and escalating social unrest prompted foreign donor nations to suspend $70 million in aid.

June 21

      High court backs Haitian policy. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the government's policy of intercepting and turning back boats ferrying Haitians to U.S. shores did not violate national or international laws even though the Haitians were not given an opportunity to present their cases for political asylum. An injunction had prevented a lower court ruling in favour of the Haitians from taking effect. The Clinton administration argued before the court that turning back the Haitians would avert a "humanitarian tragedy at sea" if tens of thousands set sail in unseaworthy boats in the hope of gaining entrance to the U.S. During the three-week period before Pres. George Bush announced the new policy in 1992, the U.S. Coast Guard had intercepted 127 boats carrying more than 10,000 Haitians. After word spread that Haitians heading for U.S. shores were being turned back without being interviewed, the dangerous voyages to the U.S. ceased almost immediately.

June 23

      Nigerian leader voids election. Nigeria's military leader Gen. Ibrahim Babangida voided the June 12 presidential election and revoked his pledge to turn over power to a civilian government on August 27. It was the fourth time since 1990 that Babangida had backed away from a promise to relinquish power. A local human rights activist viewed the situation as an impending "political crisis of immeasurable, chaotic proportions." Britain responded by threatening to sever diplomatic relations with its former African colony. The U.S. also expressed outrage over Babangida's nullification of the election. It expelled Nigeria's military attaché; recalled two U.S. diplomats stationed in Lagos; summoned the Nigerian ambassador to the State Department to officially condemn Babangida's action; and suspended some $1 million in aid.

June 25

      Canada gets first woman leader. Kim Campbell, who had been Canada's minister of defense, took the oath of office as the nation's first woman prime minister. She succeeded Brian Mulroney, who in February had announced his intention to turn over the reins of government after his Progressive Conservative Party chose a new leader. That was done on June 13. With her ascent to the prime ministership, Campbell not only enjoyed the powers of chief executive but, as leader of the ruling party in Parliament, also had a powerful voice in the nation's legislature. Campbell, widely viewed as a strong personality, immediately trimmed the size of her Cabinet by restructuring the ministries and reassigning responsibilities. She also made it clear that she hoped her "new approach to government" and her efforts to find solutions to Canada's economic and social problems would enhance her party's prospects of victory when general elections were held in the fall.

July

July 1

      Ruling party ousted in Belize. After an all-night session of counting and recounting ballots, election officials in Belize declared that the United Democratic Party (UDP) had won 16 of the 29 seats in the House of Representatives. One seat was decided by a single vote, another by just three votes. The UDP's unexpected victory over the ruling People's United Party meant that Manuel Esquivel would return to power as prime minister of the small Central American nation. He would replace George Price, who had unseated him in the 1989 election.

July 2

      U.S. detains Sheik Abdel-Rahman. Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, a 55-year-old blind Muslim cleric, was transported to a U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service detention centre after surrendering to federal officials in Brooklyn, N.Y. The Egyptian cleric was fighting efforts to deport him to his homeland, where he faced charges of inciting his followers to acts of violence. The U.S. was also weighing evidence that could lead to an indictment of Abdel-Rahman for complicity in the bombing of the World Trade Center in February and for involvement in an alleged plot to bomb other sites in Manhattan. The chief suspects in those and other terrorist incidents regularly visited the Abu Bakr Elseddique Mosque, where the sheik held sway.

      South Africa sets date for new election. South African Pres. F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, president of the African National Congress, announced in Washington, D.C., that on April 27, 1994, the nation would hold a national election in which black South Africans would be allowed to vote for the first time. Both men, following separate itineraries, later strove to convince potential investors that they would find an attractive and stable business environment in South Africa. Both men also emphasized the important role foreign capital would play in easing South Africa's difficult transition to democracy under black majority rule.

July 6

      Abkhazia put under martial law. Invoking the special powers granted to him on July 2 by the country's unicameral Parliament, Georgian Pres. Eduard Shevardnadze declared a 60-day period of martial law in the Black Sea coastal region of Abkhazia. The area, already under curfew, was home to ethnic Abkhazians, who had taken up arms to enforce their declaration of independence from the central government. A UN official confirmed that as many as 1,000 Georgians may have been killed during an offensive the Abkhazians had launched south of Sukhumi, the regional capital, a few days earlier. Russia vehemently denied charges that it was supporting the separatists with arms and troops.

July 8

      Egypt hangs Islamic extremists. The Egyptian government hanged seven Islamic militants who had been convicted in April of involvement in six separate attacks on foreign tourists. Death sentences had also been meted out to 13 others who had been convicted of acts of terrorism. Under a 1992 antiterrorism law, the defendants had been tried by military courts. On July 16 U.S. authorities arrested an Egyptian immigrant and charged him with having planned to assassinate Egyptian Pres. Hosni Mubarak during his visit to the U.S. in April. Two other Egyptians, who had been arrested in June for suspected involvement in the plot to blow up several sites in New York City, were also charged as coconspirators in the planned murder of Mubarak.

July 14

      Mexico returns smuggled Chinese. A Mexican government official announced that for humanitarian reasons some 650 Chinese who had been detained aboard three dilapidated smuggling ships would be allowed ashore so that they could be immediately repatriated. The first flight carrying the Chinese home took off on July 17. The saga began on July 6 when the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted the ships in international waters near Mexico. Although the U.S. urged Mexico to accept and then deport the illegal aliens, Mexico initially refused to get involved even though past experience had shown that most illegal aliens arriving there intended to cross the border into the U.S. Mexico's position, at least in part, reflected the country's unwillingness "to become an arm of the U.S. immigration service." However, with conditions aboard the ships becoming more deplorable by the day, Mexico allowed the Chinese to go ashore, where arrangements were made for their speedy repatriation.

July 16

      U.S. asked to end Cuban embargo. Representatives of Spain, Portugal, and 21 Latin-American nations ended their two-day Ibero-American conference in Brazil with a unanimous call for an end to the U.S. embargo on Cuba. In 1992 the U.S. Congress had, in effect, forced other nations to observe the embargo by passing a law that barred foreign merchant ships from entering U.S. ports for six months if they had docked in Cuba. Argentine Pres. Carlos Menem joined the chorus calling for an end to the embargo, but he also noted that it was unrealistic to expect the U.S. to reverse its policy until Cuban Pres. Fidel Castro embraced democratic reforms.

July 17

      Former Korean officials arrested. South Korean Pres. Kim Young Sam's anticorruption campaign took on a new dimension with the arrest of two former defense ministers, who were charged with accepting bribes and kickbacks from ordnance suppliers. The former heads of the air force and navy were also arrested. The opposition Democratic Party, with the apparent approval of the government's Board of Audit and Inspection, urged the National Assembly to question former presidents Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo if it seriously desired to get to the bottom of the scandals that had occurred during their administrations. Some legislators, attempting to circumvent the sensitive issue of interrogating former presidents, suggested that such questioning would serve no useful purpose because everything of importance was already known. On August 12 Kim hurled another thunderbolt by banning the use of false names on bank accounts, in stock trading, and in most other financial transactions. Having assets hidden away under a fictitious name clearly fostered corruption and provided a convenient way to avoid paying taxes. The true owners of an estimated $15 billion held in such accounts would now have to identify themselves.

July 18

      LDP loses its majority in Diet. Japan's Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP), after 38 years of uninterrupted control of the government, lost its automatic mandate to rule when it won only 223 of the 511 seats in the lower house of the Diet (parliament). A series of financial scandals involving top leaders in the party and defections from the party by prominent legislators had severely eroded the support the LDP had so long enjoyed. On June 18 Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa had been forced to resign and call for new elections when 39 members of the LDP, disillusioned by their party's apparent inability or unwillingness to pursue serious reforms, joined members of the opposition in supporting a motion of no confidence in the government. Uncertainty over the makeup of Japan's new government continued until August 6, when 55-year-old Morihiro Hosokawa was elected prime minister. Even though his recently formed Japan New Party had won only 36 seats in the parliamentary election, Hosokawa was asked to form a government. He succeeded by putting together a coalition that included six other parties. The LDP's insistence that it be represented in the government, and its demand that one of its members be named speaker of the House of Representatives because the LDP had the largest representation in the Diet, fell on deaf ears. The coalition chose Takako Doi as speaker, the first woman ever to hold the post.

      Pakistani leaders move to solve crisis. Pakistani Pres. Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif agreed to halt their interminable feuding by resigning and calling for new elections. The national and provincial legislatures were also dissolved as part of an agreement brokered by Gen. Abdul Waheed, the army chief of staff. Moeen Qureshi, a political independent, agreed to fill the political vacuum by acting as interim prime minister; Wasim Sajjad, chairman of the Senate, would be acting president. Voting for the National Assembly was scheduled for October 6, with provincial elections to follow three days later. Khan had dismissed Sharif and dissolved the National Assembly in April, but in May the Supreme Court rejected his interpretation of the president's constitutional powers, and Sharif was reinstated. In the months that followed, the two men were in constant conflict.

July 23

      Britain approves union treaty. British Prime Minister John Major scored a significant political victory when the House of Commons cast a vote of confidence (339-299) on his handling of the Social Chapter of the European Community's (EC's) Treaty on European Union. That section of the treaty, which involved workers' rights, was opposed by industrial leaders and by many members of Major's Conservative Party, but it had the support of the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats, the two largest opposition parties in Parliament. Once Major had won the vote of confidence, Britain became the final member of the EC to ratify the Maastricht Treaty. A nuisance challenge to the ratification process by a member of the House of Lords was dismissed by the High Court on July 30.

July 29

      Demjanjuk conviction overturned. Israel's Supreme Court overturned the conviction of John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian-born U.S. citizen who had been sentenced to death in April 1988 for war crimes and crimes against the Jewish people and humanity. The court conceded that new evidence uncovered since the trial raised a reasonable doubt that the man who had been convicted was in fact "Ivan the Terrible," a notoriously brutal guard at the Treblinka death camp in Poland, where an estimated three-quarters of a million Jews had been put to death. Both before and after Demjanjuk was extradited to Israel to stand trial, he insisted that he was the victim of mistaken identity. During his trial the prosecution had relied heavily on the testimony of survivors of Treblinka who swore that Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible. During the appeal process, Demjanjuk's lawyer had presented new evidence from previously unavailable KGB files indicating that a Ukrainian named Ivan Marchenko was the infamous war criminal sought by Israel.

August

August 1

      Albert to be king of the Belgians. Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene informed the nation that 59-year-old Prince Albert would succeed his brother as king of Belgium. King Baudouin I, who had reigned for 42 years, had suffered a fatal heart attack in Spain on July 31. Albert's well-known reluctance to become monarch gave substance to the popular presumption that his son Philippe would one day succeed King Baudouin. The government, however, had convinced Albert that he was better qualified than his son to handle the perennial feuding between Belgium's French- and Flemish-speaking populations. When Albert II was sworn in on August 9, he was only the sixth person to occupy the throne since Belgium gained independence from The Netherlands in 1831.

August 2

      UN interdicts food to Liberia. The UN special envoy to Liberia sent a letter to the government of Côte d'Ivoire ordering it to stop private relief agencies from shipping food to areas of neighbouring Liberia held by troops under the command of rebel leader Charles Taylor. The shipments, it was argued, jeopardized the implementation of a peace agreement signed by the warring factions in Geneva on July 25. Anti-Taylor forces had attacked some of the convoys in the belief that arms were being smuggled in the shipments. Several relief agencies condemned the envoy's decision on the grounds that several hundred thousand refugees, now barely surviving, would face imminent starvation if the food shipments were interdicted. Most of the refugees, including some 25,000 children, were living in a rain forest between Taylor's troops and those of a Nigerian-led West African coalition, which was supported by two other armed factions, both Liberian.

August 4

      Japan admits army abused women. In one of its last official communications, the government of Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa issued a report acknowledging that Japan had forced some 200,000 Asian women to serve as sex partners for members of its armed forces from 1932 to the end of World War II. About half of the so-called comfort women were from Korea, which at the time was under Japanese control. Other Asian women forced to work as prostitutes in the military-controlled brothels came from China, the Philippines, and Taiwan. Dutch women seized in Indonesia were also made to serve in the "comfort stations." On August 4 a Japanese government spokesman officially apologized to all those who had "suffered immeasurable pain and incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women." The new government of Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa was reportedly considering the establishment of a fund, perhaps as much as $10 billion, to satisfy the abused women's demand for compensation.

      Accord halts Rwanda civil war. Rwandan Pres. Juvénal Habyarimana and two leaders of the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front signed a peace accord in Tanzania that was designed to end three years of civil conflict between the majority Hutu tribe and the Tutsi. The accord called for UN peacekeeping troops to replace those deployed by the Organization of African Unity. It also approved the formation of a smaller military force that integrated the mostly Tutsi rebels with government forces. During the years of fighting in the central African country, thousands of people had lost their lives, and more than one million of the nation's 7.2 million people had been forced to flee their homes.

      Italy adopts a new electoral system. The Italian Parliament approved a new electoral system that allowed voters to cast ballots for specific candidates representing individual constituencies, with the victory going to the one who received the most votes. Under the previous system, voters cast ballots for a list of candidates sponsored by various political organizations. Parliamentary seats were then allotted on the basis of each party's overall showing at the polls. In the future only 25% of the seats would be distributed on the basis of party strength. Moreover, in the lower house no party would automatically be given its share of party seats unless it had won at least 4% of the popular vote. The reform, ardently backed by the electorate in an April referendum, would make individual politicians more accountable to their supporters, minimize proportional representation, and stifle corruption, which had become endemic in political circles. The reputations of the Christian Democratic and the Socialist parties had been especially damaged by revelations that their leadership was riddled with corruption.

August 10

      Ginsburg joins Supreme Court. One week after her nomination was confirmed (96-3) by the U.S. Senate, 60-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and became the second female member of the U.S. Supreme Court. She replaced Justice Byron White, who in early spring had announced his intention to resign at the end of the court's summer session. Ginsburg first took the judicial oath in the Supreme Court building and then took the federal oath of office during a nationally televised ceremony at the White House. Chief Justice William Rehnquist administered both oaths. President Clinton, who had nominated Ginsburg, remarked that the new justice would "move the court not left or right, but forward." Before her nomination Ginsburg had served for 13 years as a judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

August 11

      Germany to cut social programs. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his Cabinet approved drafts of two laws that would cut the federal budget by some $45 billion over the next three years. Virtually all of the cuts would come from social programs, including unemployment compensation, social security benefits, child allowances, and payments to workers on days they were idled by bad weather. During a period of worldwide economic recession, the government was attempting to come to terms with the immense cost of rebuilding what had been Communist East Germany. Germany's leaders felt they had had no alternative but to reduce the federal budget by trimming social programs. Critics who accused the government of placing an unfair burden on the shoulders of the elderly and disadvantaged were not likely to let the issue die before national elections were held in 1994.

August 18

      Sudan called terrorist nation. After an extensive investigation, the U.S. government notified The Sudan that it was being added to a list of countries sponsoring terrorism and would, as a consequence, be ineligible for any U.S. economic or military aid. Actually, no significant amount of such aid was presently being given to the Sudanese military government. The $56 million the U.S. was providing for the relief of refugees in the southern part of the country would not be affected. The U.S. complaint against The Sudan was based on evidence that it harboured such Islamic militant groups as Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), as well as the Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal. The U.S. further claimed that The Sudan willingly allowed such groups to train on Sudanese soil for terrorist missions.

August 21

      Contact with Mars Observer lost. Radio communications with the U.S. spacecraft Mars Observer suddenly ceased as the vehicle neared the end of its 11-month, 720 million-km (450 million-mi) voyage to Mars. Hope for the $1 billion attempt to map and collect geologic data on the "red planet" gradually faded when flight engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., tried in vain to restore radio communications. National Aeronautics and Space Administration specialists did not know with certainty why the sophisticated backup systems, designed to minimize the possibility of failure, did not respond to numerous commands from the flight-control centre. A reasonable presumption was that the spacecraft had not gone into its planned orbit around Mars. If not, it would most likely have flown past the planet and continued on into outer space.

August 25

      Two nations face U.S. sanctions. The U.S. imposed trade sanctions on China and Pakistan after determining that China had violated a 1987 international agreement by selling banned technology and missile components to Pakistan. Although China had not signed the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), it had promised to observe its provisions if the U.S. removed its restrictions on the export of high technology to China. U.S. law required the government to impose trade sanctions on any country found guilty of violating MTCR guidelines. Although China vehemently denied that it had violated the international agreement, the U.S. did not retreat from its announced plan to ban the export of nearly $1 billion in high-technology goods to China over the next two years.

August 26

      Babangida forced to resign. After eight years of military rule, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida was forced to resign as president of Nigeria and as chairman of the Armed Forces Ruling Council. Before the resignation hundreds had been killed protesting Babangida's voiding of the outcome of the June presidential election. The antigovernment strike that began on August 12 was supported by millions of workers and brought Lagos, the former federal capital, to a standstill. With banks, stores, businesses, and government offices closed, the main thoroughfares of Lagos were virtually deserted. In other parts of the country, especially in the north, the call to strike had little effect. Nevertheless, there had never been any comparable defiance of the government in the country's 33-year history. Before stepping down, Babangida named 57-year-old Ernest Shonekan head of an interim government. How long he would remain in that position and how much power Babangida would exercise behind the scenes was a matter of conjecture. Future developments also hinged on the relationship between Shonekan and MKO Abiola, who was the undeclared winner of the June election and was expected to return to the country from London at any time.

August 29

      Mass murders traumatize Brazil. The killing of four military police on August 28 was believed to have incited fellow officers to massacre 21 people in a slum area of Rio de Janeiro. The state governor called the unprovoked slaughter "an inadmissible act of revenge." Five weeks earlier hooded gunmen, widely believed to have been military police, had mercilessly shot to death seven homeless boys in downtown Rio. The children, a tiny segment of the youth population trying to survive on the streets, were looked upon as nuisance beggars, petty thieves, and drug addicts. Even though wanton killings were nothing new to Brazil, the general population was horrified by the recent murders. There had been worldwide media coverage of another act of brutality in October 1992, when heavily armed military police were called in to help quell a riot in the House of Detention in São Paulo. At least 200 inmates were killed when the police fired indiscriminately into a sea of milling inmates.

August 31

      Russian troops leave Lithuania. Lithuania's defense minister announced that 2,500 Russian troops, the last remnant of the former Soviet army, had left the country by rail. At one time the U.S.S.R. had had 30,000 troops stationed in the country. The final withdrawal occurred near the anniversary of the 1939 German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, which had led to the forced incorporation of Lithuania into the Soviet Union. A dispute that threatened to delay the pullout was resolved when Lithuanian Pres. Algirdas Brazauskas agreed to postpone negotiations on compensation he contended was owed to Lithuania. The country was reportedly demanding nearly $150 billion, but Russia insisted that it too had suffered from Soviet rule and had no responsibility for compensating Lithuania or any other nations for wrongs they had endured. On September 18 the last Russian troops left Poland. Contingents of Russia's armed forces remained in the two other former Soviet Baltic republics, Estonia and Latvia.

September

September 1

      Military dictator frees Bokassa. Gen. André Kolingba, president of the Central African Republic, ordered the release of all the country's prisoners. Among those set free was 72-year-old Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who had seized power in 1965 and proclaimed himself emperor in 1977. His coronation had cost the impoverished nation tens of millions of dollars. In 1979 France, embarrassed by Bokassa's barbarous conduct, ousted him from its former colony but granted him residence in France. Bokassa returned home in 1986, expecting a warm welcome. Instead, he was arrested and charged with cannibalism, murder, and the theft of some $170 million in state funds. One of the most despicable of Bokassa's alleged crimes was his joyful participation in the slaughter of 100 schoolchildren who had objected to being compelled to buy their school uniforms from Bokassa's factory. Although the charge of cannibalism was never sustained in court, Bokassa was sentenced to death for other crimes. His life was spared, however, when Kolingba commuted the sentence to 10 years in prison. Kolingba's order to release all prisoners came in the wake of a humiliating defeat at the polls. Abel Goumba, the leader of the opposition, called the release an act of vengeance against the nation's electorate.

September 7

      South Africa embraces change. South Africa's ruling National Party accepted a plan, approved by representatives of 23 political parties, to set up a Transitional Executive Council that would oversee preparations for the nation's first universal suffrage election in April 1994. For the first time in South Africa's history, the majority black population would have a voice in picking the nation's leaders. With virtually all political views represented in the council, differences of opinion would be resolved by compromise or, if necessary, by ballot. Meanwhile, the National Party would continue to carry out the main functions of government, with major decisions subject to a veto by 80% of the council members. On September 23 Parliament formally approved the creation of the council. The following day Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress, called for an end to the economic sanctions imposed on South Africa by the international community for some 30 years.

      Marcos' body returned to the Philippines. With the approval of Philippine Pres. Fidel Ramos, the body of former president Ferdinand Marcos was flown from Hawaii to Ilocos Norte, Marcos' home province, for interment on September 10. The crowd that greeted the plane was much smaller than the mass media and the Marcos family had reportedly anticipated. Marcos had left the Philippines in 1986 in the face of a popular uprising that brought Corazon Aquino to power. He died in Hawaii in 1989. Two weeks after her husband was buried in Ilocos Norte, Imelda Marcos was sentenced to 18 years in prison after being convicted of corruption. Although she was granted bail while her appeal was being prepared, the former first lady still faced some 100 other charges of corruption.

September 13

      Israel and the PLO sign accord. During a ceremony in Washington, D.C., Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signed an agreement that was designed to end decades of violent confrontation between Israel and its Arab neighbours. It was an event that paralleled in importance the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat, official spokesman for the Palestinians and chairman of the PLO, shook hands after Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Abbas, foreign policy spokesman for the PLO, had signed the "Declaration of Principles" on Palestinian self-government in occupied Gaza and the West Bank. Wrenching concessions had been made by both Rabin and Arafat to make this day possible, but both knew from years of bitter experience that there was no other path to peace in the Middle East. Both also knew that some of their followers were prepared to die if necessary to prevent peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews in a land both claimed was rightfully theirs. Speaking with great emotion, Rabin declared: "We the soldiers who have returned from the battle stained with blood, we who have fought against you, the Palestinians, we say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears! Enough!" Arafat remarked: "Our two peoples are awaiting today this historic hope"—a chance for true peace after generations of mutual hatred. President Clinton praised both leaders for their "brave gamble that the future can be better than the past."

      Norway's ruling party wins election. Under the leadership of Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, the Labour Party increased its plurality in the Storting (parliament) but faced growing opposition to its plan to seek membership in the European Community (EC). The agrarian Centre Party, which emerged from the election with the second largest representation in the Storting, reflected the views of most Norwegians, who, according to recent polls, wished to remain outside the EC. During the campaign Brundtland sought to mollify those voters by promising to submit the issue to a national referendum. The future of EC membership was further called into doubt when the Conservatives lost 9 of the 37 seats they had held before the election. Norway's three leading political parties were all headed by women.

September 16

      Hosokawa reveals economic plan. In an effort to pull Japan out of its worst economic recession in some 20 years, Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa announced a $58 billion economic stimulus package. A similar effort in April by former prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa's government had envisioned an investment of more than twice that sum, but only a small portion of the money had actually been spent. Although Hosokawa characterized his program as "rather bold," many economists considered the proposed lowering of rates on electricity, gas, and imported goods, the offering of low-interest loans and tax incentives, and the launching of public works projects too insignificant to lift Japan out of its economic slump. Many businessmen, moreover, were said to be convinced that no plan would be effective unless it included a cut in income taxes, which would increase the purchasing power of the general public.

September 19

      Polish voters move to the left. Apparently reacting to economic hardships brought on by the government's attempt to implement a market economy, Polish voters in large numbers turned to leftist candidates in elections to the lower house of the Sejm (parliament). The Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) won 171 of the 460 seats with 20.4% of the popular vote. It was a remarkable reversal of fortunes for the SLD, the direct successor of the communist United Workers' Party, because it had been all but obliterated in the 1989 election. The Polish Peasant Party won 132 seats with 15.4% of the vote. Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka's Democratic Union finished far back in third place, winning 74 seats and 10.6% of the vote. Four other parties qualified for representation in the Sejm by capturing a required minimum 5% of the vote. Among them was Pres. Lech Walesa's Non-Party Bloc to Support Reform, which captured 16 seats. Solidarity was among a score of other parties that failed to meet the 5% requirement.

September 21

      Prime Minister of Ukraine quits. By a vote of 294-23, the Ukrainian parliament accepted Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma's resignation together with that of his entire Cabinet. On two previous occasions Kuchma had offered to quit. Months of confrontation with Pres. Leonid Kravchuk had paralyzed the government and intensified a national economic crisis that began when Ukraine became independent of the Soviet Union in August 1991. Kravchuk, who shrugged off Kuchma's resignation as "no tragedy," called for speedy elections to all branches of government, but there was no immediate indication when that would occur. On September 22, Kravchuk named Yefim Zvyagilsky acting prime minister but then took over government responsibilities himself after five days.

September 22

      Clinton offers health-care plan. In a speech before a joint session of Congress, President Clinton set forth the basic features of his proposed national health-care program. Among numerous other things, it would guarantee affordable health coverage for all U.S. citizens and legal aliens, including the estimated 37 million Americans who were currently uninsured. The task of drafting a national health plan that would be viewed as basically fair by a large majority of Americans had been entrusted to the president's wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the team she had brought together. Among those consulted during the laborious process of gathering information were physicians, hospital administrators, insurance companies, drug manufacturers, senior citizens, the handicapped and mentally ill, the unemployed, and the owners of small and large businesses, who would be expected to pay part of their employees' insurance premiums. While the task of reconciling conflicting interests of various groups or classes in society in a myriad of medical situations was mind-boggling, the problem of funding the plan was, if anything, even more daunting. Clinton proposed "managed competition" as a workable solution, but many were skeptical that the cost of such a plan could be kept within reasonable bounds. All admitted, however, that exhaustive discussions and numerous modifications of the plan would have to take place before Congress would be willing to vote the plan into law.

September 23

      Sydney chosen to hold Olympics. The International Olympic Committee (IOC), after four rounds of balloting in Monte-Carlo, selected Sydney, Australia, as the site of the summer Olympic Games in the year 2000. The four other candidates, eliminated one by one after successive rounds of voting, were Istanbul; Berlin; Manchester, England; and Beijing (Peking). Because Beijing had received the most votes in each of the first three rounds, the Chinese were stunned when the IOC voted to award the games to Sydney. The disappointment was especially keen because China had waged an aggressive and expensive campaign to convince the IOC and the world at large that it deserved to serve as host for the Summer Games in 2000. On July 26 the U.S. Congress had voted (287-99) against the selection of Beijing because of its alleged violations of human rights. The IOC and China both resented this intrusion as inappropriate interference in the selection process.

September 24

      Sihanouk restored as monarch. Norodom Sihanouk, who had first become king of Cambodia in 1941 while the country was still a French protectorate, assumed the throne for the second time. The new government, which had been installed after years of civil war, had modified the constitution so that Sihanouk could become monarch. It was an implicit acknowledgement that no other person had the prestige necessary to unite the war-weary nation. Sihanouk then named one of his sons, Norodom Ranariddh, first prime minister. His party had finished first in the May national election. In a move toward national reconciliation, Sihanouk named Hun Sen second prime minister. He had been prime minister in the former government, which had been installed by Vietnam.

September 27

      Sukhumi falls to secessionists. After an 11-day offensive marked by relentless shelling from secure mountain positions, Abkhazian secessionists in the Republic of Georgia captured Sukhumi, a regional capital in the northwestern corner of the country. The fall of Sukhumi was a staggering blow to Georgian Pres. Eduard Shevardnadze, who had gone to Sukhumi and had remained to the last minute in an effort to preserve the unity of his nation. The fighting in Abkhazia had actually begun 13 months earlier when Georgian troops were ordered to oust the secessionist administration in Sukhumi. During the months of fighting that ensued, Shevardnadze repeatedly accused the Russians of aiding the rebels. Although Russia categorically denied the charge, ethnic Russians were in fact fighting on the side of the Abkhazians, with or without the approval of Moscow. Their alleged motive was revenge against Shevardnadze, who, it was claimed, shared responsibility for the breakup of the Soviet Union while he served as Soviet foreign minister under Pres. Mikhail Gorbachev. On July 27 both sides accepted a Russian-mediated cease-fire. Under terms of the accord, Georgia withdrew most of its heavy military equipment and a large portion of its army from the area. When the Abkhazians violated the cease-fire on September 17 by launching an offensive, the poorly defended city was doomed to fall. Shevardnadze acknowledged defeat, but he pledged that Georgia would one day reclaim Sukhumi—if not "tomorrow," he promised, then by the next generation.

September 30

      Thousands die in Indian quake. An earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale devastated whole villages in central India in the very early hours of the morning. Nearly 3,000 people were reported killed in their sleep in the villages of Killari and Umarga, Maharashtra, when their poorly constructed homes collapsed in rubble. After daybreak, thousands of relief workers, including police and military personnel, rushed to the area over rural roads to aid those who had been injured and to bring them desperately needed supplies. Mass cremations were undertaken to prevent the spread of disease, making it impossible to determine how many lives had been lost.

October

October 4

      Russian troops suppress revolt. Government troops loyal to Russian Pres. Boris Yeltsin successfully assaulted the Parliament building in Moscow and subdued hundreds of heavily armed rebellious deputies and their supporters. Early reports indicated that 142 people were killed in what was described as the fiercest fighting in Moscow since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Intense animosity between reform-minded Yeltsin and his two most powerful political foes—Vice Pres. Aleksandr Rutskoy and Parliamentary Speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov—neared the boiling point on September 21 when Yeltsin dissolved Parliament and called for new elections in December. The legislature, made up largely of hard-line communists, responded by voting to impeach Yeltsin. During the week that followed, the two sides moved inexorably toward a final, violent showdown. On October 3 Rutskoy appeared on the balcony of the barricaded Parliament building to exhort anti-Yeltsin demonstrators below to seize the Kremlin, the mayor's office, and the main broadcast facility. Faced with escalating violence in the streets, Yeltsin declared a state of emergency in Moscow and ordered elite troops to storm the building. Rutskoy and Khasbulatov were among those who surrendered.

      Mogadishu raid leads to U.S. pullout. At least 12 U.S. soldiers were killed and at least 75 wounded in a 15-hour battle with the rebel forces of Somali warlord Gen. Muhammad Farah Aydid. The conflict in Mogadishu began when some 100 Rangers captured 19 of Aydid's aides in a surprise raid on his stronghold in the southern section of the city. The Rangers, forced to stay in the area when one of their 12 helicopters was shot down by Aydid's militia, were quickly surrounded by armed Somalis. Before UN reinforcements, delayed by barricades in the streets, could reach the scene, two more helicopters were downed by rockets. Videotapes showing Somalis gleefully dragging dead U.S. soldiers down a street outraged U.S. citizens, who quickly joined some members of Congress in demanding the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops. The original mission of preventing massive starvation, they argued, had already been successfully completed. On October 7 President Clinton promised the nation that all U.S. troops would be out by March 31, 1994. Meanwhile, he said, additional troops would be dispatched to Somalia to support those already there. He hoped that during the intervening months the area could be stabilized and that steps would be taken to establish a functioning government.

      Hosni Mubarak reelected in referendum. In a national referendum, Egyptian voters overwhelmingly endorsed a third six-year term for Pres. Hosni Mubarak. The interior minister reported that fewer than 4% of those who cast ballots had opposed Mubarak's reelection. The president, who had assumed office after the 1981 assassination of Anwar as-Sadat, had reportedly won wide public support for his steadfast opposition to Islamic militants whose declared goal was the establishment of a strict Islamic state in Egypt. On October 13 Mubarak reappointed Atef Sedki prime minister.

October 6

      Bhutto's party wins a plurality. Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party won a plurality of 86 seats in the 217-seat National Assembly, considerably fewer than she had hoped for. The Pakistan Muslim League led by Nawaz Sharif finished second with 72 seats. On July 18 Pres. Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Sharif, who at the time held the office of prime minister, agreed to end their incessant feuding by resigning and holding new elections. Because both major parties presented similar programs during the campaign, and both, according to opinion polls, were viewed as corrupt, only about 40% of the registered voters went to the polls. Monitors from some 40 foreign nations generally agreed that the election was probably the cleanest in more than 20 years. On October 19 the National Assembly elected Bhutto prime minister by a vote of 121-72. Her ability to govern would depend on the continued support of the minor parties and independents she had wooed during the weeks following the election. On November 13 members of the National Assembly, the Senate, and the four provincial legislatures elected Foreign Minister Farooq Leghari president. He defeated Wasim Sajjad by a vote of 274-168.

      Study links red meat to prostate cancer. The Journal of the National Cancer Institute published the results of an extensive study of prostate cancer undertaken by the Harvard School of Public Health. Researchers recorded the eating habits of nearly 48,000 U.S. males over a four-year period beginning in 1986. None of the men had detectable cancer when the study began. After analyzing the data, the research team concluded that men who ate red meat five or more times a week had a significantly higher risk of developing life-threatening prostate cancer than those who ate red meat only once a week. The report was said to provide the clearest evidence thus far of a direct link between prostate cancer and the consumption of animal fat. After lung cancer, prostate cancer was the leading cause of death among U.S. males.

October 7

      Angolans to revive peace talks. Angolan Pres. José dos Santos declared his willingness to resume peace negotiations with Jonas Savimbi, the rebel leader of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). The statement came one day after UNITA announced that it would abide by the terms of a 1991 peace accord and accept dos Santos' victory in the September 1992 election. After a 17-month truce, UNITA had resumed fighting following its defeat at the polls. Hopes for an end to the 18-year-old civil war, which during the past year alone had claimed some 100,000 lives, were tempered by a warning from UNITA that even though it was prepared to accept the election results "if it means bringing peace to Angola," it was not prepared to relinquish control of the territory it occupied—almost 70% of Angola—in exchange for peace. On September 26 the UN Security Council had heightened pressure on UNITA by banning the sale of arms and fuel to the insurgents.

October 10

      Greek voters support Socialists. The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) party regained power in Greece by winning 170 of the 300 seats in the Chamber of Deputies (parliament). Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis dissolved the parliament after 3 of the 150 members of his conservative New Democracy (ND) party had joined Political Spring, a new political entity founded by former foreign minister Antonis Samaras. The ND emerged from the election with 111 seats in the new parliament, Political Spring with 10, and the Greek Communist Party with 9. The victory of the Socialists meant that 74-year-old Andreas Papandreou would once again resume the prime ministership, which he had lost in 1989. During his previous administration he had come under fire for publicly flaunting his affair with a flight attendant half his age before divorcing his wife to marry her. He had also been charged with corruption but was acquitted in 1992. Papandreou had promised the electorate that, if elected, he would halt the privatization of public utilities and state-run industries, raise private-sector wages, and end the freeze on wage and pension increases, which had been elements of the ND's austerity program to reduce the nation's budget deficit.

October 14

      Poland gets new prime minister. Pres. Lech Walesa named Waldemar Pawlak prime minister of Poland. The leftist leader of the Polish Peasant Party (PSL) was, according to a recent poll, the most popular politician in the country. The PSL, which had won 132 of the 460 seats in the September 19 elections to the Sejm (parliament), and the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), which had won 171, had agreed on October 13 to form a coalition government. The leader of the SLD, Aleksander Kwasniewski, said at the time that he was prepared to direct the coalition caucus but that he would not join the government. Kwasniewski envisioned a government that supported a strong market economy and respected social rights.

October 15

      Murderers of Chris Hani to die. Two white South African men were sentenced to death after being found guilty the previous day of the April murder of Chris Hani, the secretary-general of the South African Communist Party and a prominent black antiapartheid leader. The verdict was rendered by a white judge in Johannesburg because South African laws did not provide for jury trials. Janusz Walus, a Polish immigrant, was found guilty of fatally shooting Hani outside his home. Clive Derby-Lewis, a member of the pro-apartheid Conservative Party, was convicted of murder for supplying Walus with the gun.

October 20

      Noriega found guilty of murder. Gen. Manuel Noriega, the former Panamanian strongman currently serving a 40-year sentence in Miami, Fla., for drug trafficking, was convicted by a Panamanian court of ordering the 1985 torture murder of Hugo Spadafora, a political opponent who had publicly accused Noriega of dealing in weapons and drugs. Noriega and two of his former associates were sentenced to prison for 20 years. Vociferous protests in several cities greeted the announcement on September 6 that seven other soldiers charged with complicity in the murder had been acquitted.

October 24

      Burundi president slain in coup. A news report broadcast over the Burundi government radio station confirmed that Pres. Melchior Ndadaye had been slain in a military coup. Ndadaye's election in June had raised hopes that fighting between the Tutsi, who had been in power since 1962, and members of his own Hutu tribe, which constituted more than 85% of the total population, would end after more than 30 years of conflict. To that end Ndadaye had named several Tutsi to his Cabinet and had left the army under the control of Tutsi officers. On October 21, however, paratroopers stormed the presidential palace and took Ndadaye and three of his ministers captive. Steps were then taken to cut off contact with the outside world. Although former president Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, a Tutsi, had reportedly planned the coup that Lieut. Col. Jean Bikomagu allegedly carried out as commander of the army, both denied involvement when tribal violence began to engulf the country. On October 25 army generals requested Prime Minister Sylvie Kinigi, who had taken refuge in the French embassy, to form a new government. Over radio she urged army personnel to return to their barracks and promised that severe punishment would be meted out to those responsible.

October 25

      Canada's Liberals sweep election. Canada's Liberal Party under the leadership of 59-year-old Jean Chrétien overwhelmed the ruling Progressive Conservative Party led by Kim Campbell by winning 177 of the 295 seats in national elections to the House of Commons. Its new total represented an increase of 98 seats. For the Conservatives, the most humiliating aspect of their defeat was the loss of all but two of the 155 seats it had held while in power. In Canada's 126-year history, no ruling party had ever been so resoundingly rejected by the voters. The Bloc Québécois, which campaigned only in its own province and was committed to independence from the Canadian federation, won 54 of the province's 75 seats. The Reform Party, based in western Canada, captured 52 seats, many of which had been held by Tories. Nine seats went to the New Democratic Party (NDP) and one to an independent. The makeup of the new House of Commons would be decidedly different from that of the previous legislature because 205 members had no previous experience in national politics. With fewer than 12 seats each, the NDP and the Progressive Conservatives lost their status as official parties and were no longer eligible for government subsidies. On November 4 Chrétien took the oath of office as Canada's 20th prime minister.

November

November 1

      Maastricht Treaty takes effect. After years of often difficult negotiations, the Treaty on European Union, which had been individually ratified by all 12 members of the European Community (EC), officially took effect. It granted special rights and imposed new obligations on the signatories, which had committed themselves to "an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe." The EC included Belgium, Denmark, France, the U.K., Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. The so-called Maastricht Treaty, named after the Dutch city where it was drafted in 1991, was an outgrowth of the Treaty of Rome, which established the Common Market in 1957. During a special meeting in Brussels just three days before the union treaty took effect, certain members of the EC expressed misgivings about some aspects of the complex agreement. There was also a perceptible lack of enthusiasm among ordinary citizens who did not feel that their interests dovetailed with those of other member nations. Some leaders were especially reluctant to accept the notion that domestic policies could, in some instances, be determined by outsiders. During the meeting in Brussels, Frankfurt, Germany, was selected as the site for the European Monetary Institute. One of the goals envisioned by the treaty was the creation of a single European currency by 1999.

      Australia offers Chinese permanent home. The Australian government announced that some 19,000 Chinese who had been granted an indefinite extension of their visas following the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing (Peking) in 1989 would be offered permanent residence. The same privilege would be granted to the 9,500 family members who had joined them since 1989. The government also intended to review the cases of some 20,000 people who had filed applications for political asylum. About 8,000 of that number were expected to meet the government's new criteria for permanent residence. These included the ability to speak English.

November 2

      Islamic militants under attack. Algerian officials reported that during the two previous days its security forces had located and killed 17 Islamic militants in an area some 65 km (40 mi) east of Algiers. In five smaller encounters a total of 11 other radical Muslims were shot and killed. During the two years that had elapsed since the Algerian government canceled the second phase of a national election that the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front was poised to win, an estimated 2,000 people had been killed in terrorist acts of revenge. On November 9 French police arrested 88 persons suspected of being members or supporters of the Islamic Salvation Front. Concerned that the Salvation Front might be having an unwholesome influence on the approximately three million Muslims living in France, the government said it could not accept "the use of religion as cover for political movements aimed at causing disorders."

November 4

      California battles raging fires. More than 6,500 professional and volunteer firefighters, assisted by planes and helicopters dropping water and fire-retardant chemicals from the air, finally extinguished or contained the last of more than a dozen major fires that had devastated five counties of southern California. At one point various fires were raging along a 320-km (200-mi) long stretch of land reaching to the Mexican border. On October 30, four days after the first fires broke out, the worst appeared to be over. On November 2, however, the dreaded Santa Ana winds, gusting up to 110 km/ h (70 mph), turned scrub vegetation into tinder as they roared into the area through the Santa Monica Mountains. Several new wildfires erupted northwest of Los Angeles, then became an inferno that sped toward the exclusive beach community of Malibu, where some 300 homes were destroyed. The J. Paul Getty Museum, which housed an art collection worth billions of dollars, was spared. According to early estimates, the fires destroyed or severely damaged at least 1,000 homes and displaced about 25,000 people. The total damage was believed to exceed $500 million. Evidence collected by fire inspectors indicated that at least half of the major fires had been set by arsonists.

November 6

      New Zealanders elect Parliament. In an election so close that the decisive seat in New Zealand's national legislature was not settled until absentee ballots were tallied on November 17, the ruling National Party (NP) retained power with the barest possible majority in the 99-seat House of Representatives. Polls released just two days before the election indicated that the NP, which had held 63 seats to the Labour Party's (LP's) 29, would easily maintain its control of the government. The LP, however, emerged from the election with 45 seats; had it won the pivotal seat decided by absentee ballots, the NP would have been denied a 50th seat and a majority in the legislature. Two relatively minor parties won two seats each. Prime Minister Jim Bolger expressed satisfaction with his party's "wafer-thin" victory. Political analysts attributed the NP's decline in popularity to its austerity program, which included reductions in social services and welfare benefits.

November 9

      UN issues report on refugees. Sadako Ogata, head of the United Nations agency on refugees, released a report entitled The State of the World's Refugees—the Challenge of Protection. It was the agency's first report on the status of refugees worldwide. The survey estimated that there were currently 19.7 million refugees living in foreign lands and an additional 24 million who had been uprooted from their homes by violence of one kind or another but remained within their national borders. The agency noted that the massive movement of refugees across international borders had "endangered the time-honoured tradition of granting asylum to those in genuine need of protection." Foreign refugees were facing mounting problems, according to the report, because "beleaguered governments are closing their doors in panic, while racist and xenophobic attitudes are dangerously on the rise." Afghanistan led the world with 4.5 million of its citizens displaced. In 1992, the year covered by the report, there were 7.2 million refugees in Asia, 5.4 million in Africa, and 3.6 million in Europe. Iran had accepted the largest number of refugees, 2.9 million from Afghanistan and 1.2 million from Iraq. Among industrial nations Germany was the most generous, having granted asylum to some 827,000 refugees.

November 11

      Women's war memorial dedicated. Vice Pres. Al Gore dedicated a bronze sculpture in Washington, D.C., in honour of the 11,500 women who had served their country during the Vietnam War. Eight of their number had died in uniform. The statue, which portrayed three women assisting a wounded soldier, was placed about 90 m (300 ft) from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall. Gore remarked that it was the nation's way of thanking the women veterans, who, "in the tense, sometimes confusing peace" that followed the war, had not been fittingly recognized for their military service.

November 14

      Puerto Ricans prefer status quo. Puerto Ricans, by a narrow margin, voted to retain the island's status as a U.S. commonwealth rather than seek union with U.S. as its 51st state. The popular vote was approximately 48.4% to 46.2%. Only 4.4% backed total independence. Gov. Pedro Rossello and his ruling New Progressive Party had campaigned for statehood. They argued that any adverse effects statehood might have on the local economy would be more than offset by various forms of federal aid. Miguel Hernández Agosto, leader of the opposition Popular Democratic Party, was among those who urged voters to retain Puerto Rico's current political status as the best way to protect the local economy, which depended in large measure on businessmen who by and large were exempted from paying U.S. federal taxes. The people were also warned that statehood would gradually erode the heritage of Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans. In any case, Puerto Ricans were already U.S. citizens but were not obliged to pay federal income taxes. They could not, however, vote in U.S. presidential elections.

November 17

      House passes NAFTA legislation. The U.S. House of Representatives voted 234-200 in favour of legislation implementing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The vote was crucial because rejection in the House would have killed the bill even though passage in the Senate was assured. The House vote was a major political victory for President Clinton, who began to personally lobby scores of congressmen when it appeared unlikely that the bill would pass. Twelve hours of emotional debate preceded the evening vote. Prominent Democrats, led by Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and Majority Whip David Bonier, argued on the side of most labour groups, who felt that many U.S. jobs would be lost to Mexico once tariffs and other trade barriers had been removed. Another vigorous opponent of NAFTA was maverick politician H. Ross Perot. Numerous Republican politicians and businessmen, on the other hand, supported Clinton's view that more U.S. jobs would be created by NAFTA than would be lost. When the final vote was taken, only 102 of 258 House Democrats voted for NAFTA, but their vote was bolstered by 132 of 175 Republicans. The Senate later approved NAFTA by a vote of 61-38. On November 22 the Mexican Senate approved NAFTA by a vote of 56-2. The pact had earlier passed the Canadian Parliament. On Jan. 1, 1994, Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. would begin the 15-year process of gradually eliminating tariffs and other trade barriers that impeded free trade across their national borders.

November 20

      Seattle welcomes APEC leaders. Leaders of nations that had subscribed to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) concluded their first summit in Seattle, Wash., as guests of President Clinton. Since "economies" rather than nations were the focus of attention, Taiwan and Hong Kong were members of APEC, along with Australia, Brunei, Canada, China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and the U.S. The 15 economies represented nearly two billion people and half of the world's economic production. They also included the world's leading exporters. Mexico, Chile, and Papua New Guinea were due to join in 1994. Australia had taken the lead in establishing APEC in 1989, intent on devising a strategy for competing with such formidable trading blocs as the European Community and with the U.S. and Canada, which had entered into a free-trade agreement. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad, whose anti-Western remarks often made headlines, was one of three leaders who did not attend. Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating publicly chided Mahathir for boycotting the meeting, saying that he "couldn't care less" about the prime minister's absence because "APEC is bigger than all of us."

November 30

      Brady handgun bill becomes law. President Clinton signed into law the Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act, which required a five-day waiting period before anyone could purchase a handgun. During that time local law-enforcement authorities were required to check the backgrounds of prospective buyers. Minors, felons, substance abusers, and illegal immigrants would not be allowed to purchase such weapons. The legislation, informally known as the Brady bill, was named after former White House press secretary James S. Brady, who had been permanently crippled and almost killed in the 1981 attempt to assassinate Pres. Ronald Reagan. Since that time Brady and his wife, Sarah, had ceaselessly campaigned for gun control. The strongest opponents of the bill had been the National Rifle Association and its supporters. The House passed the bill on November 23, the Senate on November 24. Although many viewed the bill as little more than a feeble gesture at gun control, Brady saw it as a first step toward bringing about "the end of unchecked madness and the commencement of a heartfelt crusade for a safer and saner country."

December

December 1

      Commemorations mark AIDS day. World AIDS Day, which had been annually promoted by the World Health Organization since 1988, was observed in an estimated 180 countries. The commemorations were meant to increase awareness of the disease, to dispense information on ways to avoid it, and to make a plea for more intensive research to discover a cure for what was still an irreversible condition. The gatherings also memorialized the tens of thousands who had already succumbed to AIDS, those who were afflicted with AIDS, and those who had been diagnosed as HIV positive—that is, those infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

December 2

      Pablo Escobar dies in shoot-out. Pablo Escobar, who had amassed an incredible fortune as head of an international drug cartel, was killed in a shoot-out with Colombian soldiers and police. An elite task force had traced phone calls to locate Escobar in Medellín, a city in western Colombia that was the centre of his illegal operations. Experts estimated that at one time Escobar's network had supplied about 80% of the cocaine consumed in the U.S. and that the total income from his drug sales was in the neighbourhood of $20 billion a year. About $6 billion of that amount found its way back to Colombia. Authorities had been searching for Escobar since July 1992, when he escaped from a luxurious prison where he had been held since negotiating the conditions of his surrender.

December 5

      Rafael Caldera wins presidency. In an election that featured four major candidates, Rafael Caldera, running as a coalition candidate, won the presidency of Venezuela with 30.3% of the popular vote. From 1969 to 1974 he had held the same office as a member of the Social Christian Party. Political analysts attributed Caldera's victory to a general disenchantment with government reforms that promoted a free-market economy. Claudio Fermín, candidate of the Democratic Action party, finished in second place with 24.2% of the vote, and Oswaldo Alvarez, who ran as a Social Christian, finished third with 23.5%. Andrés Velásquez, who represented the leftist Radical Cause party, was preferred by 20.8% of the voters. Early analysis of the congressional races, which were decided at the same time, indicated that a pro-Caldera coalition would not control a majority of seats in the national legislature.

December 9

      Seoul and Tokyo yield on rice. South Korean Pres. Kim Young Sam chose national television as the proper medium for informing the nation that he had finally agreed to open up the country's rice market to foreign imports. The statement predictably outraged the country's rice farmers and others with a vested interest in preventing foreign rice from reaching local markets. Kim explained that South Korea was doing what was necessary to help guarantee a successful conclusion to the negotiations taking place in Geneva to broaden the international General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. On December 14 Japanese Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa announced that he too had reached the "regrettable" decision to allow a modest quantity of foreign rice to enter the country. The political cost Hosokawa would doubtless have to pay at home was considered unavoidable if Japan hoped to do its part to foster freer world trade.

December 12

      Russia faces crucial balloting. Some 60% of those who voted throughout Russia approved a new constitution, which had been endorsed by Pres. Boris Yeltsin in early November. Yeltsin had stipulated that formal approval of the charter would require a minimum turnout of 50% of all eligible voters and approval of at least 50% of all those who cast ballots. Under the new charter, the powers of the president were significantly enhanced. Among other things, he would serve as head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces; set basic domestic and foreign policies; name the prime minister, subject to approval by the lower house of Parliament; and have authority to declare martial law and a state of emergency. The president could also veto legislation, but a two-thirds majority in the lower house would override the veto. Voters also chose a new Parliament, the makeup of which astonished almost everyone, both at home and abroad. Contrary to expectations, there was no clear endorsement of democracy or of Yeltsin's efforts to promote a market economy. On the contrary, the Liberal Democratic Party received the widest support—22.8% of the popular vote cast. Its leader was Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a Russian nationalist (some called him "fascist"), a lawyer, and a former presidential candidate very much opposed to Yeltsin's program. With Yeltsin's two most formidable political foes under arrest for leading an armed revolt in October, Zhirinovsky quickly became the focus of international media attention by making outrageous remarks that managed to offend or alarm almost everyone. He spoke, for example, of restoring the Russian empire by reclaiming part of Poland, the Baltic states, Iran, Afghanistan, and Alaska. Although Yeltsin could look for support in Parliament from such groups as Russia's Choice and the Yavlinsky-Boldyrev-Lukin bloc, it was clear that he would have no easier time dealing with the new Parliament than he had had with the one he dissolved on September 21.

      Chilean voters underwrite democracy. In the country's most lopsided presidential election in 60 years, 58% of Chile's voters supported the candidacy of Eduardo Frei and his centre-left coalition. Arturo Alessandri, a representative of rightist politics and Frei's closest rival, received only 24% of the popular vote. The election demonstrated, for the third time in five years, that Chileans had resolutely turned their backs on Gen. Augusto Pinochet and other right-wing politicians. Under Pres. Patricio Aylwin, who had brought an end to Pinochet's 17-year military rule with his election victory in December 1989, an estimated one million Chileans had moved above the poverty level as the country reached the highest rate of growth and foreign investment in Latin America. Chile also had one of the region's lowest rates of inflation. After his election victory, Frei pledged to continue the policies that were transforming the country and giving its people renewed hope for the future.

December 13

      Hubble space telescope repaired. U.S. astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavour returned to Earth after completing repairs on the Hubble Space Telescope. Almost immediately after the Hubble was launched into orbit in April 1990, scientists had realized that the $1.5 billion instrument was not performing according to expectations. The principal problems turned out to be a flaw in the construction of the primary mirror and malfunctions of the solar panels. On December 4, two days after blasting off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the astronauts rendezvoused with the Hubble. Working in pairs, the crew then began a series of five space walks to retrieve the Hubble, to correct the optics of the primary mirror, to replace the solar panels, and to install new stabilizing gyroscopes. Astronomers expected to know in a matter of weeks if the repairs had given the Hubble the ability to transmit sharply focused images of objects in space as far as 15 billion light-years away—the goal NASA had in mind when the telescope was designed.

December 15

      GATT talks end on a high note. Peter Sutherland, director-general of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, declared in Geneva that the Uruguay round of negotiations, which had far-reaching consequences for 117 nations, had been successfully concluded after several days of marathon discussions. The announcement evoked cheers from the assembled delegates. To meet the December 15 deadline, the United States and the European Community had agreed to leave several contentious issues unresolved. Formal signing of the documents was scheduled to take place in Morocco in April 1994. The agreement, which was the broadest and most important international trade pact in history, would take effect on July 1, 1995. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimated that implementation of the accord would add more than $270 billion a year to the world economy.

December 28

      Tenth plane hijacked to Taiwan. A Chinese businessman, accompanied by his wife and 11-year-old son, hijacked a Fujian Airlines plane and forced the pilot to fly to the Taipei (Taiwan) International Airport. The couple had threatened the crew with what they said was a homemade bomb. It was the year's 10th successful hijacking of a Chinese plane to Taiwan. China's Political Bureau, obviously embarrassed by the incidents, demoted the head of the nation's Civil Aviation Administration and announced that in the future all airline passengers and their baggage would be searched for items that could be used to threaten crews assigned to certain air routes.

December 30

      Vatican and Israel reach accord. An uneasy relationship that had lasted for decades was dramatically transformed when Vatican City State and Israel signed an agreement in Jerusalem to establish diplomatic relations and initiate a new era of understanding and cooperation. Given the long history of conflict between Jews and the Holy See, many Israelis, as well as communities of Jews throughout the world, welcomed the opportunity to put the past behind them and recognized that the time had come for reconciliation. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin, who signed the document for Israel, remarked, "Behind the agreement there are thousands of years of history, full of hatred, fear, and ignorance, with a few islands of understanding, of cooperation, and of dialogue." Msgr. Claudio Celli, who signed for the Vatican as undersecretary of state, called the signing a historic moment with spiritual significance for millions of people throughout the world.

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