Events of March 1996

Anne D. Baylon

EASTERN EUROPE

Russia

Mar. 1 Against promises made to the International Monetary Fund, Russian Finance Minister Vladimir Panskov proposes to increase import tariffs by about 20%. The plan is intended in part to help President Boris Yeltsin's reelection campaign by raising revenue for social spending. The IMF has promised to lend Russia $10.2 billion provided that Moscow continues with market reforms and reduces trade barriers.

Mar. 15 Challenging President Boris Yeltsin's authority, the Russian parliament votes to void the 1991 accord that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Although Mr. Yeltsin can stop the resolution from becoming law, the resolution raises fears as to what will happen if Communist leader Gennadi Zyuganov, who is currently ahead in the polls, becomes President in June.

Mar. 17 Gennadi Zyuganov presents an election program intended to appeal to a large spectrum of voters. Although he says that the Soviet Union should be restored, he insists that such a confederation of former republics should be voluntary. He also stresses that he will not renationalize businesses or confiscate private property but makes it clear that he favors state control of the economy's main sectors and opposes a large-scale sale of land.

Mar. 21 In the wake of the Russian parliament's vote on the restoration of the Soviet Union, Gennadi Zyuganov and the Communist Party have come under greater voter scrutiny and have been accused of harboring “a secret plan to restore Soviet-style rule and economic management.”

Mar. 25 Russia drops its plan to increase import tariffs by 20%, prompting the International Monetary Fund to go forward with a $10.2 billion loan to help Russia with market reforms. The planned schedule should make more then $1 billion available before the June elections, giving President Yeltsin an important election boost.

Mar. 28 Although he was forced out of office by President Yeltsin, former Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais, a leading economic reformer, says that he will support President Yeltsin's reelection because “he has the best chance to stop Gennadi Zyuganov from coming to power and repealing reforms.”

Mar. 31 In the strongest step of his reelection campaign, President Yeltsin announces an end to all major military operations in Chechnya and says for the first time that he will approve peace talks with Chechen rebel leader Gen. Dzhokhar Dudayev. But Chechen commanders, civilians, and even Russian soldiers in Grozny are skeptical that Mr. Yeltsin's announcement will bring much change.

Russia/Belarus

Mar. 23 The leaders of Russia and Belarus, President Boris Yeltsin and President Aleksandr Lukashenko, agree to form a “union state” which will tie the two countries economically, politically, and culturally. Unlike the Commonwealth of Independent States, which is a loose and ineffectual group of former Soviet republics, the new union is a first real step toward a confederacy centered around Russia and based on shared cultural values.

Russia/Chechnya

Mar. 3 Russian troops are ambushed by Chechen rebels in Sernovodsk, a Chechen town 30 miles west of the capital of Grozny. The troops had been sent to the area to disarm rebels believed to be hiding there.

Mar. 5 One thousand people join 16,000 others who have fled Sernovodsk and found refuge in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia. Russian troops have now besieged and shelled the town for the past three days.

Mar. 6 Capturing a freight train, hundreds of Chechen rebels ride into Grozny and mount an offensive to retake the capital which Russian troops have held for over a year.

Mar. 7 Chechen rebels retake one third of the city, destroying water lines, gas depots, and heating supplies. The Chechen assault on the capital is aimed at destroying Mr. Yeltsin's chances of reelection in June.

Mar. 8 Pro-Chechen gunmen hijack a Turkish Cypriot jet near Cyprus and land it in Munich, reportedly claiming that “they just wanted to make their voices heard” and will let the passengers go.

Mar. 11 Chechen rebels leave Grozny after a four-day assault on Russian troops. According to the Russian Interior Ministry, 170 Russian soldiers died in the battle, 276 were injured, and 40 are missing.

Mar. 13 Russian aircraft bomb the village of Bamut, 40 miles southwest of Grozny, in which Chechen rebels hold 90 Russian hostages they captured during the assault on Grozny.

Mar. 22 Russian planes strike villages throughout Chechnya. In Bamut, Chechen rebels resist fiercely.

Russia/Kazakstan/Kyrgyzstan/Belarus

Mar. 29 Moving to undercut the Communists who have called for the Soviet Union's restoration, President Yeltsin signs an agreement to create closer ties with Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Belarus. The agreement lists the creation of a common market for goods, services, and capital and the coordination of industrial and agricultural policies as future measures to be taken.

THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA

Bosnia

Mar. 1 The international war crimes tribunal charges Bosnian Serb Gen. Djordje Djukic, a close aide to Gen. Ratko Mladic, of war crimes, including the shelling of civilian targets in Sarajevo. The indictment brings to 53 (46 Serbs and 7 Croats) the number of suspects indicted by the tribunal.

NATO troops are reluctant to become involved in hunting war crime suspects, saying that their task is the far larger responsibility to separate the warring forces and keep peace.

Mar. 2 The Bosnian government has sent several hundred Bosnian troops to Iran for training, causing the West to worry about the indoctrination of these troops in Islamic ideology. Combined with the presence of about 200 Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Bosnia (in violation of the Dayton Agreement), the training marks the efforts by the Iranian militant Islamic government to develop close ties with the Bosnian government.

Mar. 4 In an interview, Louise Arbour, the Canadian judge who is to succeed Richard Goldstone as chief prosecutor of the international war crimes tribunal, stresses that the prime responsibility for arresting possible war criminals rests with Balkan leaders who signed the Dayton Agreement. The NATO force, she points out, should not be viewed as the “primary source of cooperation” with the tribunal.

NY Times, Mar. 5 Former Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic will be challenging President Alija Izetbegovic in upcoming presidential elections by running on a platform of ethnic harmony and an end to religion-based politics. So far, Serbs, Muslims, and Croats have constituted three powerful factions that favor dividing the country into three separate republics; but Mr. Silajdzic says that Bosnia “must remain one country based on respect for others.”

Mar. 5 Over 20 criminal lawyers have been recruited to defend the Bosnian Serb officers indicted by the international war crimes tribunal. Their chief task, they say, is to make sure that their clients do not cooperate with the tribunal since they might inadvertently provide incriminating information about more senior officials.

Mar. 6 A dozen men, believed to be Bosnian Croat police officers, try to obstruct the transfer of Hadzici, the third of five Sarajevo suburbs to be handed over to the Muslim-Croat Federation by Mar. 20. They occupy the police station but withdraw after NATO threatens to use force.

Mar. 7 The U.N. prosecutor for the war crimes tribunal asks Serbian officials to release Drazen Erdemovic, a soldier who confessed to shooting scores of Muslims in Srebrenica at the direct order of his superiors. The soldier was arrested on Mar. 3 by the Serbian police in what may have been an attempt to prevent his testimony before the tribunal.

Mar. 8 As the Mar. 20 deadline for Sarajevo's reunification approaches, many Serbs are leaving the last Serbian areas of Sarajevo, in part because separatist Serbs intent on dividing Bosnia are intimidating them into leaving. In Tuzla, Muslim refugee women block the roads into the city, calling for international action to find their relatives (about 8,000 of them) who disappeared after Bosnian Serbs seized the Srebrenica enclave last July.

Mar. 10 NATO commanders order reinforcements to stop the mounting lawlessness, looting, and arson by gangs of young Serbs in the two remaining Serbian-held suburbs of Sarajevo.

Mar. 11 In the five Serbian suburbs of Sarajevo that are being turned over to the Muslim-Croat Federation, over 50,000 of the population of 60,000 Serbs have now fled.

Mar. 12 In the first significant contribution to the war crimes tribunal, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic pledges to turn over to the tribunal two Bosnian Serb soldiers held by the Serbian police in Belgrade.

Mar. 13 The anarchy officials feared from the transfer of Serbian-held suburbs to the Muslim-Croat Federation has come true in the Sarajevo suburb of Ilidza (turned over on Mar. 12) where hundreds of Muslim thugs have been intimidating the 3,000 elderly or sick Serbs who have remained.

Mar. 14 The U.S. Senate votes to withhold $200 million in civilian aid to the Bosnian government until Iranian military and intelligence personnel leave the country. According to the Dayton Agreement, all foreign soldiers were to have left Bosnia by Jan. 19.

Mar. 17 Grbavica, the last Serbian-held enclave to be turned over to the Muslim-Croat federation on Mar. 19, suffers devastation as Bosnian Serb gangs set fire to entire blocks of housing. Detention of suspects by NATO forces (the most aggressive response they can use) does not deter the widespread destruction.

Mar. 18 In a follow-up of the Feb. 18 crisis meeting in Rome, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, and Bosnia's Acting President Ejup Ganic meet in Geneva and promise again to carry out the Dayton Accord. In particular, they agree to hand over several officers to the war crimes tribunal, to restore air and rail links, to release the last 219 prisoners of war, and to improve freedom of movement and association prior to elections scheduled for September.

Mar. 19 A Pentagon report to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee predicts that, without a major international aid program to rebuild Bosnia's economy and political institutions, the “prospects for the existence of a viable, unitary Bosnia beyond the life” of the NATO deployment are “dim.”

With most Serbs gone from Sarajevo, the return of the last suburb of Grbavica to Bosnian government control signals the final split of Bosnia into three ethnic enclaves instead of the hoped for return to multi-ethnicity.

Acting on an international warrant from the war crimes tribunal, German and Austrian authorities arrest three men, including, for the first time, a Bosnian Muslim said to have killed Bosnian Serb civilians.

Mar. 20 International civilian and military authorities are pressing NATO to keep at least a reduced force after its year-end planned withdrawal. According to Carl Bildt, who presides over civilian efforts to implement the Dayton Accord, refugee return and Bosnia's reconstruction require “a feeling of overall security for which some kind of military presence will be required.”

So far, the U.N. only has been able to deploy 693 of the 1,721 civilian police monitors it was asked to recruit, because member -countries are either not meeting their pledges or sending unqualified personnel.

Mar. 22 The war crimes tribunal issues its first indictment for crimes committed against Serbs and charges three Bosnian Muslims and one Bosnian Croat for crimes against Serbian prisoners at the Celebici detention camp in Central Bosnia. Until now, Serbs have contended that the tribunal was biased against Serbs.

Mar. 23 Meeting in Moscow, the foreign ministers of the Contact Group for the former Yugoslavia (U.S.A., Britain, France, Germany, and Russia) warn that a planned April 12 meeting in Brussels on economic aid to the region will be canceled unless all prisoners of war in Bosnia are released.

Mar. 27 German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel announces the cancellation of a meeting intended to draw Bosnian Muslim and Croat leaders closer because the two sides “were too far apart for the meeting.” According to a German official, disagreements affect everything, including “the structure of the federation, how it works, refugees, pilot projects, and the federation police."

Mar. 31 Muslim and Croatian leaders sign a contract to help make their federation workable. Proposed by international mediators, the plan establishes a new customs arrangement to raise revenues for the federation. It also permits the firing of local leaders who obstruct the implementation of federation agreements and outlines steps to operate the working federation such as the development of a federation budget and banking system.

Serbia

Mar. 3 While Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic has been promoting himself internationally as a “guarantor of peace in the Balkans,” at home he has been cracking down on political opposition and moving to reassert state control of the economy. For example, by controlling the media Mr. Milosevic has been able to maintain a 50% approval rating despite an unemployment rate of 50%.

Mar. 9 Twenty thousand people demonstrate in Belgrade against the government of President Slobodan Milosevic, accusing him of starting the wars in Bosnia and Croatia and of having destroyed Serbia's economy.

WESTERN EUROPE / EASTERN EUROPE

Germany

NY Times, Mar. 24 Since the late 1980s, more than one million ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union have taken advantage of German laws allowing them to return to Germany and obtain full citizenship and social benefits. But their return has coincided with economic difficulties for Germany due to the cost of reunification and unemployment caused by an economic slowdown. As a result, ethnic Germans have found resentment and the German government has issued laws limiting Germany's acceptance of ethnic Germans to 220,000 per year.

NATO

Mar. 2 The U.S. and its NATO allies agree on new procedures that will allow European countries to use NATO command and support structures on their own (i.e., even if no U.S. combat troops are involved) in future peacekeeping operations of the Bosnia type. The new procedures could be used to avert blowups in territory traditionally within NATO's scope in Europe or even North Africa. The agreement reinforces the notion of a cohesive European defense that France, Germany, and other European leaders have promoted.

Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

Mar. 7 In Geneva, Russia endorses a global treaty to ban underground nuclear testing but does not approve a “no yield” test ban that would prohibit even the slightest release of nuclear energy (the U.K., France, and the U.S. support such a ban and have been waiting for Russia's public endorsement of it).

Russia/Norway

Mar. 26 President Boris Yeltsin ends a two-day visit to Norway by pledging over $200 million toward environmental cooperation, in particular for the cleanup of a nickel refinery on the Russian Kola Peninsula, near the Norwegian city of Kirkenes. The plant, which creates a “black desert” with the sulfur dioxide it emits into the air, will be rebuilt on a model that will reduce emissions by 95%.

Spain

Mar. 3 Jose Maria Aznar, a 43-year-old conservative, becomes Spain's new Prime Minister. He defeats Felipe Gonzales who, as Prime Minister for the past 13 years, had helped the transition from dictatorship to democracy.

Turkey

Mar. 3 The two center-right parties—Mesut Yilmaz's Motherland Party and Prime Minister Tansu Ciller's True Path Party—form a coalition government to block Necmettin Erbakan's pro-Islamic Welfare Party from acceding to government (although it won December parliamentary elections). The coalition government arranges for a power-sharing formula in which Mr. Yilmaz and Mrs. Ciller will take turns at the post of Prime Minister.

United States

Mar. 16 Prompted by a growing international campaign to ban the use of land mines, a strong anti-mine sentiment in Congress, and the daily threat to American soldiers of three million land mines planted in Bosnia, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Shalikashvili orders a review of the military's long-standing opposition to banning the use of these mines. An estimated 100 million land mines have been planted in 62 countries and approximately 600 people a month are killed or wounded as a result.

United States/Former Soviet Union

Mar. 12 A report prepared for the U.S. Senate warns that the former Soviet republics cannot account for a large share of their bomb-grade uranium and plutonium stockpiles, thus creating a “primary national security concern for the United States.” The report cites in particular the lax security systems protecting the stockpiles, making these stockpiles an easy target for thieves.

Mar. 17 In a project initiated in 1993, the Russian Tupolev warplane manufacturer has joined U.S. aerospace companies to carry out research for a new supersonic civilian plane. Any aircraft that results from this American-Russian collaboration will compete with the Franco-British Concorde supersonic plane.

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