Events of January 1996
Anne D. Baylon
Poland
Jan. 6 Former President Lech Walesa has started a campaign to discredit the new government and President Aleksander Kwasniewski with allegations that new Prime Minister Jozef Oleksy, a former Communist, spied for the Soviet Union. The accusation concerns Mr. Oleksy's friendship with Vladimir Alganov, a Soviet diplomat and K.G.B. spy in Poland. Mr. Oleksy has denied the charges.
President Kwasniewski chooses Dariusz Rosati, an economist, as Foreign Minister and Stanislaw Dobrzanski from the Peasants' Party as Defense Minister.
Jan. 22 Jacek Kuron and Karol Modzelewski, two prominent Polish dissidents who were repeatedly jailed by the Communist secret police, write in an open letter that Poland's secret service today is just as powerful as it was during the Communist era. Both dissidents claim that the secret service merely switched allegiance to President Lech Walesa and prepared the allegations that Prime Minister Jozef Oleksy spied for Moscow.
Jan. 24 As Poland's military prosecutor announces an espionage investigation of Mr. Oleksy and two Russian diplomats alleged to be K.G.B. agents, the Prime Minister resigns while protesting that he is innocent.
Jan. 27 The Social Democratic Party (former Communist Party) chooses Jozef Oleksy as its leader; the party is the core faction of the Democratic Left Alliance, a coalition in which the Peasants' Party is a junior partner.
Jan. 31 Poland's governing coalition (the Democratic Left Alliance) nominates Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, a former Communist and deputy speaker of parliament, to become the next Prime Minister.
EASTERN EUROPE
Russia
Jan. 5 In a move that was long predicted, President Boris Yeltsin accepts the resignation of Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, one of the last liberals in his cabinet.
Jan. 9 President Boris Yeltsin chooses Yevgeny Primakov, director of Russia's foreign intelligence service and a member of the powerful Russian Security Council, as his new Foreign Minister. A longtime Communist Party member, Mr. Primakov is an experienced bureaucrat with a sense for public relations.
Jan. 12 In his first news conference, Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov emphasizes that “Russia remains a great power,” and states that Russia's partnership with the U.S. should become more “equitable.” He also stresses that Russia needs to show more leadership in Bosnia and in its relationship with former Soviet Republics, and he reiterates Russia's opposition to NATO expansion.
Jan. 16 Distancing himself from the government's less than popular economic reforms, President Boris Yeltsin accepts the resignation of Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais, the last liberal in his cabinet. Mr. Chubais, who designed Russia's privatization program, had won the trust of Western institutions; he resigns on the eve of final crucial negotiations for a $9 billion International Monetary Fund loan.
Jan. 25 President Boris Yeltsin picks Vladimir Kadannikov, the director of Avtovaz, Russia's largest state-owned automobile company, as Deputy Prime Minister, replacing Anatoly Chubais. A Soviet-schooled industrialist, Mr. Kadannikov is an advocate of government measures to protect Russian industry.
Jan. 27 Oneksim Bank, the largest commercial bank in Russia, has caused a major political scandal after it initiated a privatization program that resulted in favoritism and inequities. Under the bank's scheme, known as “loans for shares,” a few Kremlin-favored banks lent the government money in 1995 in exchange for the ability to buy at very low prices shares in Russia's most valuable industries (oil, shipping, and metals). Unpopular with Russian voters, privatization has been nicknamed “grabification,” or the giving away of government wealth to a few well-connected and unscrupulous businessmen.
Russia/Chechnya
Jan. 9 Slipping into Russia, a band of Chechen rebels seize a large hospital in Kizlyar, a city of 40,000 in the plains of Dagestan, taking about 2,000 hostages and promising to leave only when Russian troops withdraw from Chechnya. Russian special army forces surround the hospital and close off the city.
Jan. 10 Russian leaders allow the Chechen rebels to leave Kizlyar in 11 buses with 143 hostages, but Russian forces fire on the rebels near the border with Chechnya. In turn, the rebels seize 25 new hostages and take over the small farming village of Pervomayskoye.
Jan. 11 The Chechen rebels demand freedom for Chechnya. As the Russian military leaders ask for the hostages' freedom first, the rebels return to Pervomayskoye and threaten to kill the 143 hostages they hold.
Jan. 13 After releasing children who have been held hostage, no progress is made in the talks between Russian negotiators and Chechen rebels about releasing the remaining captives.
Jan. 14 At the request of Dagestan's leadership, the Russian government backs away from a deadline that had been set for freeing the hostages; but Salman Raduyev, the leader of the Chechen raid and a relative of Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev, insists that he will not lay down his arms.
Jan. 15 Russian troops launch a furious assault on Pervomayskoye. In Moscow, President Yeltsin defends the assault by saying that all peaceful means of ending the standoff have been exhausted.
Jan. 16 While the Chechen rebels withstand a second day of attack by Russian troops in Pervomayskoye, another group of rebels carries the Chechen war beyond Russian borders by hijacking a Russia-bound ferry in the Turkish Black Sea port of Trebizond and threatening to kill Russian passengers if the Russian army does not stop its assault. Also in Grozny, Chechnya's capital, other rebels declare a campaign of “widespread terrorist activity” and kidnap 30 employees of a Russian power plant.
Jan. 17 Saying that the hostages are dead, the Russian army acknowledges its failure to rescue them and withdraws its ground troops in order to flatten Pervomayskoye with “devastating missiles.”
Jan. 18 The Russian army finally overcomes the Chechen rebels in Pervomayskoye, but the number of casualties cannot be assessed. As the hijacked Turkish ferry approaches Istanbul, Chechen hijackers pull back from their threats to blow up the ship and say that they only seek to bring Chechnya's plight to world attention.
Jan. 19 Turkey ends the ferry hostage crisis without bloodshed by persuading the Chechen hijackers to surrender and release the approximately 200 hostages.
Jan. 22 Salman Raduyev, the Chechen raid leader, emerges from seclusion for an interview and vows that the fight will continue. The number of casualties in Pervomayskoye is still unknown.
Jan. 24 Chechen rebels release 46 of the 100 Pervomayskoye hostages but continue to hold 14 Russian policemen captured after the Jan. 9 raid on Kizlyar and the 30 Russian power-plant workers seized in Grozny on Jan. 16.
THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA
Bosnia
Jan. 1 Since the Dayton Agreement, Sarajevo residents are free to travel throughout the city, but a Serbian checkpoint on a bridge linking parts of Sarajevo has prevented Muslims from crossing to the Serbian side. NATO, which denied the checkpoint's existence at first, says that the matter will be addressed immediately.
Jan. 2 The Bosnian Muslim government accuses Bosnian Serbs of violating the Dayton Agreement by abducting 16 civilians traveling through Serbian-held areas of Sarajevo and holds NATO forces responsible for the missing people. Although NATO's job is to make the country secure, civilian protection should lie ultimately with the international civilian police force to be created under former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt.
Jan. 3 As part of the Dayton Agreement, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic will not be able to run for office in the late spring elections. Increasingly isolated from the one million Serbs he rules, he is under attack from opposition figures and members of his own party who want him removed from power. NATO officials visit the Serbian-held suburb of Ilidza to press for the release of the detained Bosnian Muslim civilians but obtain no assurances that they will be freed.
Jan. 4 Under pressure from NATO and the U.S., the Bosnian Serbs release 16 Bosnians they had detained for 13 days. According to Carl Bildt, the international police force to be created will have only 1,700 officers to cover the whole country; freedom of movement, therefore, will be very difficult to ensure and diplomatic pressure will be more effective.
Jan. 6 Mostar, the capital of what the Dayton Agreement has planned as a federation in which Croats and Muslims will jointly govern about half of Bosnia (the other half being under Bosnian Serb control), remains a tense city. Shootings between Croats and Muslims there have prompted the European Union administrator to consider closing the bridge that connects the two communities for their protection.
Jan. 7 Mostar's Muslim officials ask NATO to take the EU's place in administering the city. The EU started administering Mostar after the 1994 accord that ended the fighting between Bosnian Croats and Muslims, and the Western European Union—the military arm of the EU—sent 180 police monitors to help create a joint Muslim-Croat police force. Recently, local Croatian leaders who disagree with the Dayton Agreement have fomented violence to undermine it. Muslim officials believe that only NATO can stop the rising violence. But NATO commanders state that they lack the manpower to get involved in police work and reaffirm that their task is to separate factions, not law enforcement.
Jan. 8 After receiving instructions from Zagreb, Croatia's capital, Bosnian Croat leaders in Mostar assure the EU administrator for the first time that they will work to reunify the city as planned under the Dayton Agreement. Croatia has supported Bosnian Croats politically and militarily throughout the Bosnian war.
NY Times, Jan. 11 The Ljubija mine in northern Bosnia may contain as many as 8,000 bodies and could document the Bosnian Serbs' campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against Muslims and Croats living in this region. As NATO troops move into the area, the Bosnian Serbs are exhuming bodies from numerous mass graves and transferring them to the mine where the remains are doused with chemicals and hidden under tons of debris.
Jan. 11 As Bosnian Serb forces continue to withdraw from front lines in Sarajevo, Bosnian Serb families who are not prepared to accept Muslim rule leave the city with their belongings (sometimes exhuming their dead) and head toward Serbian-controlled territory.
Jan. 12 Departing from the way U.S. and other Allied troops have operated until now, Defense Secretary William Perry says that, starting later this month, the peace-enforcing troops will provide security for human rights investigators searching for evidence of war crimes in Bosnia and that once enough NATO forces are deployed, these forces will guarantee “freedom of movement and security to all civilians and international organizations traveling through Bosnia.” One hundred and fifty Russian elite paratroopers arrive in Bosnia to join the peace-enforcement troops. They will take their orders from a Russian general who is a deputy commander at NATO headquarters in Brussels, but their actions will be coordinated by Maj. Gen. William Nash, the U.S. commander in Bosnia.
Jan. 14 The White House announces that U.S. civilian contractors, mostly retired American military officers, will start training Bosnian Muslim soldiers in the next 60 days in order to insure that they can defend themselves after NATO peacekeepers leave. Under the plan, Bosnian Muslim troops would be trained in Bosnia or in a NATO country such as Turkey. Islamic countries would pay for most of the training.
Jan. 15 The Bosnian government postpones a large exchange of prisoners that was planned under the Dayton Agreement until the Bosnian Serbs provide information on about 24,000 missing Muslims. Of those, 4,000 are believed to be detained, but the fate of the remaining 20,000 is unknown.
Jan. 19 Having no means to make arrests and little ability to carry out investigations, the international war crimes tribunal asks NATO for help in securing mass graves in Bosnia (i.e., guarding sites) and arresting indicted war criminals. Both Gen. George Joulwan, the senior NATO commander, and NATO Sec. Gen. Javier Solana make no commitments. They emphasize that NATO forces have no mandate to act as a police force and that maintaining an overall secure environment is their primary goal.
In accordance with the Dayton Agreement, Bosnian Serb and Bosnian government forces complete the withdrawal of their forces and heavy weapons from the 1,000-mile-long cease-fire line to create a two-mile separation zone. But they only exchange about 225 prisoners of war on each side (leaving about 700 behind) as Bosnian government officials reiterate their demands about the 24,000 Muslims missing in Serb-held Bosnia.
Jan. 27 The release of prisoners under the Bosnia peace plan resumes, but there is a “long way to go,”according to Jacques Demaio, coordinator of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Sarajevo.
Jan. 29 Over the past 10 days, more than 500 prisoners have been released by all sides, but 112 prisoners known to be held have yet to be released.
Croatia
Jan. 9 Eastern Slavonia, the last region of Croatia still held by Croatian Serbs, is expected to return to Croatian administration with provisions for the protection of the Croatian Serbs living there. A U.N. peacekeeping force of about 5,000 men, which will be created for a one-year period and led by a U.S. diplomat, Jacques Klein, is to disarm the region, including the city of Vukovar. NATO will assist the peacekeepers by giving them “close air support” and intervening militarily to defend them if needed.
Jan. 31 Serbian officials in eastern Slavonia are refusing to acknowledge that the region will return to Croatia. Through TV and radio broadcasts, they are urging the 30,000 Serbian refugees who were expelled from other parts of Croatia and are now in Serbia to settle in eastern Slavonia.
Serbia/Croatia
Jan. 18 A fight between Serbia and Croatia for control over the Prevlaka Peninsula, a small piece of land at the tip of Croatia's Dalmatian coast that ends at the entrance to Kotor Bay—owned by Montenegro and home to the Yugoslav Navy—is an obstacle to the Dayton Agreement provisions. According to the agreement, all countries in the region must recognize each other's borders; but Serbia refuses to recognize Croatia's borders, because whoever controls the peninsula also controls the bay and the Yugoslav Navy vessels.
WESTERN EUROPE / EASTERN EUROPE
France
Jan. 8 Former President Francois Mitterand, a strong proponent of European unity, dies in Paris.
Jan. 29 France ends its nuclear weapon-testing program definitively after its last underground blast in the South Pacific on Jan. 27 generates enough data for computer simulations that make future tests unnecessary.
France/NATO
Jan. 17 France, which returned to NATO's Military Committee in December, expresses its willingness to discuss the role its independent nuclear deterrent could play “as part of a strengthened European pillar within the Alliance.” But its ambassador, Gerard Errera, says France will not join NATO's Nuclear Planning Group or its Defense Planning Committee.
Greece
Jan. 15 After two months of hospitalization that paralyzed the government, Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou cites his illness to formally resign and urges his party, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, to elect a successor within three days.
Jan. 18 The governing Greek Socialist Party elects Costas Simitis, a Papandreou rival, as the new Prime Minister. Mr. Simitis, who was the architect of the government's recent fiscal austerity plan, is expected to keep the Greek economy in line with the Maastricht Treaty. He is also a pro-European modernizing reformer who “will clean up the party as it heads to elections in 1997.”
Portugal
Jan. 14 With 53.8% of the votes, Socialist candidate Jorge Sampaio is elected to succeed Mario Soares as President of Portugal, defeating former Prime Minister Anibal Cavaco Silva, his conservative rival.
Turkey
Jan. 9 President Suleyman Demirel invites Necmettin Erbakan, the leader of the Islamic Welfare Party who won the largest number of seats in parliament in December elections (leaving Prime Minister Tansu Ciller's True Path Party and its rival, the Motherland Party, behind), to form a coalition government. Mr. Erbakan is not expected to succeed because of his anti-secular and anti-Western positions.
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