Events of July 1996
Anne D. Baylon
Czech Republic
July 2 Prime Minister Václav Klaus formally submits a new coalition cabinet to President Václav Havel after elections on May 31 and June 1 gave a strong second place to the opposition Social Democrats and stripped the governing coalition of its majority. Mr. Klaus hopes to submit his new government’s program to parliament by mid-July.
EASTERN EUROPE
Russia
July 1 After canceling a series of public meetings, President Yeltsin attempts to compensate for his total absence from the public view for a week by making a brief, “wooden, tightly choreographed” television speech urging Russians to vote for him in the July 3 elections.
July 3 Defeating Communist leader Gennadi Zyuganov, President Boris Yeltsin is reelected by a wide margin of 13.3 percentage points. Mr. Yeltsin‘s victory is due in part to the 15 million voters who had supported Gen. Lebed in the first round of elections and overwhelmingly voted for Mr. Yeltsin this time; it also reflects Mr. Yeltsin’s “extraordinary personal resilience” and Russia’s rejection of the return of its Communist past.
July 4 President Yeltsin reappoints Viktor Chernomyrdin as Prime Minister. Promising to “resurrect Russia,” Mr. Yeltsin urges the nation to end the political discord between the “victorious and the vanquished.”
July 9 Gen. Lev Rokhlin, the chairman of parliament’s defense committee, accuses high-ranking officials of using the military budget to gain personal financial benefits. Among the accused are former national security advisor Gen. Pavel Grachev, his key aides, and other high-ranking officers who are described as “mired in corruption.”
July 10 (Reported in NY Times, July 12) President Yeltsin signs a decree that gives Aleksandr Lebed, his new security adviser, “expanded power to fight crime and restore order in Moscow.”
July 11 A bomb explodes in a trolley bus in Moscow, wounding five and challenging President Yeltsin’s promise to crack down on crime.
July 12 After another trolley bomb explodes in Moscow and 60 bomb threats are reported, President Boris Yeltsin declares the city “infested with terrorists” and sends 1,000 elite soldiers onto Moscow’s streets.
July 15 President Yeltsin retreats to the Barvikha sanitarium (where he was treated twice before for heart problems) for two weeks after canceling a meeting with U.S. Vice President Al Gore and appointing a free-market advocate, Anatoly Chubais, as his new chief of staff.
July 16 Although President Yeltsin finally meets with Vice President Gore at the sanitorium, he appears “wan and stiff.”
July 17 Russian army Gen. Igor Rodionov is selected by President Yeltsin as the new Russian Defense Minister replacing Gen. Pavel Grachev, who was ousted in June. Gen. Rodionov, whom a Western expert describes as “not corrupt, well-educated on foreign affairs, and ruthless,” is closely associated with Aleksandr Lebed.
July 22 In an internal power struggle indicative of the discord and disarray among Communist factions after their defeat in the presidential election, Viktor Anpilov, the leader of the hard-line Communist Workers’ Party, is dismissed from the Moscow party organization where he held the position of first secretary.
The IMF delays a $330 million monthly payment to Russia, part of a $10.2 billion three-year loan it granted Moscow in February. IMF officials say that, although Russian expenditures have remained on target, revenues from taxes are way under tax projections; this is partly due to the fact that some companies did not pay taxes until they were certain that the Communists would not win the elections.
July 24 The Communist-dominated parliament rejects government-supported legislation that would encourage foreign companies to invest billions of dollars in the oil and gas industry and thus generate badly needed revenue. The Communists’ success in blocking the legislation shows that, despite their recent defeat in the presidential election, they still have the power to stall market reforms.
July 30 Unable to withstand Russia’s shift from Communism and the new competitive marketplace, Pravda, Russia’s “oldest and most famous Communist newspaper,” ceases publication.
Russia/Chechnya
July 7 Ignoring a deadline that is part of the Russia/Chechnya peace agreement, Russian troops remove only 4 of the 32 checkpoints that they had agreed to dismantle by July 7.
July 10 Despite President Yeltsin’s promise to end the war in Chechnya, Russian forces attack two Chechen villages south of Grozny in violation of the peace agreement and kill dozens of civilians.
July 11 Russian forces attack the village of Makhkety, which they suspect to be the headquarters of Chechen rebel leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev; leading commanders on both sides of the fighting are killed.
July 13 Despite his original conciliatory approach to the war in Chechnya, national security advisor Aleksandr Lebed refers to the Chechen rebels as “bandits,” and reasserts that “Chechnya is on the territory of Russia.” He also reiterates his desire to become President.
July 15 As Russian troops blockade villages in southeastern Chechnya, Chechen rebels attack an armored Russian vehicle in Grozny.
July 20 (Reported in New York Times, July 22) In a new assault, Russian troops attack a base 30 miles south of the capital of Grozny, killing 5 Chechens and wounding 18 others.
Ukraine
NY Times, July 16 Coal miners protest unpaid wages by blocking a rail line in eastern Ukraine. Corruption, combined with the slow pace of privatization, has caused Ukraine’s standard of living to lower. As a result, millions of workers have not been paid for months.
THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA
Bosnia
July 2 The U.S. Department of Defense announces that 1,200 armored American troops in Bosnia will be replaced with members of the military police from several American forts. Although they will not have the firepower of the troops, the military police will be more appropriate for dealing with the September elections and the resettlement of the refugees.
July 3 The Clinton Administration pledges to send $360 million in military aid to the Bosnian government if it agrees to merge the Muslim and Bosnian Croat troops into one single army (the aid would provide weapons and training needed by the merged army if it ever had to fight the better-equipped Bosnian Serbs). But, despite the creation of the Muslim-Croat Federation under the peace accord, tensions still remain between Muslims and Bosnian Croats who fought each other in a vicious war in 1993 and 1994, and both sides resist the merger.
In an effort to pressure NATO nations into arresting the two indicted Bosnian Serb leaders, Gen. Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, investigators of the war crimes tribunal in The Hague present the court with details of the mass murders committed under the two Serbs’ responsibility in the city of Srebrenica during the war.
Despite encouragement from his supporters, Radovan Karadzic announces that he will not be running in Bosnia’s September elections.
July 4 Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic meets in Belgrade with Biljana Plavsic, Radovan Karadzic’s successor, to discuss Mr. Karadzic’s future and how much influence he still wields over the ruling Serb Democratic Party in the Bosnian Serb republic.
July 6 NATO Commander in Bosnia Admiral Smith says that he has no orders to hunt down Radovan Karadzic and no plans to intimidate or arrest him.
July 8 Robert Frowick, the U.S. diplomat who leads the mission to organize Bosnian elections, threatens to block the Serb Democratic Party from the Sept. 14 elections unless its leader, Radovan Karadzic, steps down. (Although Mr. Karadzic handed his powers to Biljana Plavsic, his deputy, he retained his title and was reelected chairman of the Serb Democratic Party for four years.)
July 9 The Muslim-Croat Federation adopts a law to merge the Muslim and Bosnian Croat armies, prompting Washington to begin delivering arms and a training program to bring the federation’s forces up to the level of the better-equipped Bosnian Serbs.
U.N. war crimes investigators begin to exhume bodies from a mass grave in Cerska, near Srebrenica, where Bosnian Serb soldiers are believed to have buried thousands of Muslims they killed. The findings will be used in the trials of Gen. Mladic and Radovan Karadzic if they are arrested.
July 11 The U.N. war crimes tribunal issues international arrest warrants for Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic. Although the warrants require U.N. member-nations to arrest the two men if they enter their countries, the warrants’ effect is limited by the failure of the West to order their peacekeeping troops to pursue the two men.
July 12 The U.S. and Bosnia sign an investment pact that will give American businesses incentives (i.e., financial support for long-term investment) to help Bosnia recover from the war.
The OSCE, which is in charge of supervising the September elections, disqualifies seven candidates from the government’s Muslim Party as punishment for physically attacking a rival politician. The June 15 attack was on former Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic, who was once a member of the party before breaking away to create his own rival party.
July 15 In order to give the Bosnian Serbs more time to remove Radovan Karadzic, their leader, Robert Frowick postpones the start of the election campaign until July 19.
July 19 U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke announces that, in an agreement negotiated with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic has agreed to surrender his political power and step down as chairman of the Serb Democratic Party. But Dr. Karadzic will not be exiled and put on trial for war crimes at The Hague as Wester nations have long been seeking.
July 23 In a breakthrough in the relations between Bosnia and Serbia, a 40-member delegation of Bosnian officials and businessme makes an official visit to Serbia for the first time since the Bosnian war began in 1992. They discuss with President Slobodan Milosevic the removal of travel visas and the restoration of communications.
July 24 Lieut. Gen. Patrick Hughes, head of U.S. military intelligence, warns Congress that unless U.S. peacekeeping troops stay in Bosnia another year (past the current year-end deadline), other NATO nations will pull out their forces and Bosnia will be likely to return to a state of civil war. There are about 16,000 Americans in the peacekeeping force.
NY Times, July 26 Deeply frustrated by his powerlessness to bring Radovan Karadzic to trial, Antonio Cassese, president of the international war crimes tribunal, warns of harsh consequences, including a loss of credibility for the U.N. and other international organizations, if those indicted for atrocities are not brought before the tribunal.
NY Times, July 27 The 1,500 United Nations monitors in Bosnia have been given broad powers to reform the local police forces who often violate people’s most basic rights, especially those of Muslims; but they have become highly critical of the United Nations for failing to support their efforts at stopping the abuses and being “far too eager to seek change by persuasio rather than by mor forceful efforts.”
July 29 A high-level Bosnian Serb delegation meets with officials of the international war crimes tribunal to discuss pressing charges against Alija Izetbegovic, the President of the Muslim-led Bosnian government.
WESTERN EUROPE / EASTERN EUROPE
Turkey
July 2 Necmettin Erbakan, Turkey’s first Prime Minister to represent an Islamic political party since the republic was founded in 1923, announces to visiting U.S. State Department officials his plans to develop closer ties with the Arab world.
July 8 The Turkish parliament approves a coalition government composed of Mr. Erbakan’s Islamic Welfare Party and the True Path Party, the center-right party headed by former Prime Minister Tansu Ciller.
U.S.A./Russia/Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
July 23 In an agreement announced by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, the U.S. and Russia agree to press for the international ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; the treaty, which has been under negotiation for over 18 months, would prohibit any nuclear testing in all parts of the world. So far, the U.S., Britain, France, and Russia have ended their testing.
July 29 China conducts a nuclear test but announces that it will be its last. The announcement coincides with the resumption in Geneva of the 61-nation disarmament conference intended to complete the draft treaty for the worldwide ban on nuclear tests.
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