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<TITLE>July</TITLE>
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<CENTER><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+4">Events
of July 1997</FONT></FONT></FONT></CENTER>
<CENTER><HR WIDTH="100%"></CENTER>
<CENTER><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+1">Anne
D. Baylon <B><BR>
</B></FONT></FONT></FONT><B> </B></CENTER>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+1">CENTRAL
EUROPE<B><BR>
<BR>
</B></FONT></FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+1">Albania</FONT></FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 2 </B>Although
President Sali Berisha promised to resign after his party lost elections
on June 30, he refuses to step down and maintains that he still has "constitutional
duties."</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 3 </B>A gunfight
erupts outside the central election commission, prompting Franz Vranitzky,
the special European envoy for the elections, to charge that "political
interference" is slowing the vote count (now in its fifth day). The
delay, which threatens runoff elections in 25 districts scheduled for July
6, allows Mr. Berisha to hang on.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 6 </B>Runoff
elections confirm the landslide victory of the Socialist Party in the
parliamentary elections.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 24</B> After
President Sali Berisha quit in disgrace on July 23, Parliament elects as
President Rexhep Mejdani, a 53-year-old physicist and Socialist Party
general secretary. Mr. Mejdani accepts the resignation of caretaker Prime
Minister Bashkim Fino and replaces him with Fatos Nano, the Socialist
Party leader.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>NY Times, July 30</B>
The new Socialist government's ambitious program to restore order in
Albania wins Parliament's overwhelming support.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Czech
Republic</FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 12</B> President
Václav Havel announces that he will run again for office in early
1998 elections.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Hungary</FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>NY Times, July 27</B>
In the first instance of its kind, the Hungarian government is planning to
provide long-overdue compensation in the form of small pensions to Jews
who suffered at the hands of the Nazis and were then caught behind the
Iron Curtain.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+1">EASTERN
EUROPE</FONT></FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Georgia/Abkhazia</FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 1 </B>While a new
round of shuttle diplomacy by Russia begins, fighting erupts between
Georgians and Abkhaz separatists in the northwest, leaving five Georgian
commandos dead and, on the Abkhaz side, five injured and one dead. Fifteen
hundred Russian peacekeepers currently patrol a buffer zone between
Abkhazia and Georgia.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Russia</FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 2 </B>President
Boris Yeltsin dismisses Justice Minister Valentin Kovalyov, who had been
involved in a video scandal showing him in a sauna with naked women, and
replaces him with Sergei Stepashin, a former security service chief.</FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 4 </B>On the
anniversary of his re-election as President, an optimistic President
Yeltsin announces that the five-year decline of the economy has finally
stopped. The announcement follows an earlier statement by Prime Minister
Viktor Chernomyrdin that the gross domestic product had risen by one
percent during the first half of the year.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>NY Times, July 7</B>
With the love of gambling claimed as a "fundamental national trait,"
Russian lotteries, played by as many as 65 million people and openly run
by organized crime, have become the biggest fraud in Russia. They have now
prompted the tax-poor government to stake a claim on the $1 billion in
annual revenues that a legal lottery might bring.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 12</B> President
Boris Yeltsin is planning to end by 2003 housing and utility subsidies, a
holdover from the Soviet era. With about 40 percent of the apartments in
Russia still owned by municipal governments, most Russians pay only a
fraction of their rent, leaving the cash-strapped local governments to pay
the difference; as to utility subsidies, they run against energy
conservation. Accustomed to cheap rents and hit by high prices in other
sectors, however, Russians view the fourfold increase in costs negatively.</FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 22 </B>Making a
personal commitment to religious freedom, President Boris Yeltsin rejects
a bill that would severely limit the activities of all religions, except
for a few "traditional" ones (i.e., Russian Orthodox Church,
Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam). The law, passed overwhelmingly by
Parliament to protect the Russian Orthodox Church from competition from
other religions, would potentially make all other religions (including
Roman Catholicism and the Baptist movement) "foreign and unwelcome"
and subject to being stripped of their property and rights to proselytize.</FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 28</B> Faced with
a military too poor to even train its soldiers for combat, President
Yeltsin signs a series of decrees that will drastically transform the
Russian army, cutting its size by a third (from 1.8 million to 1.2 million
men) over the next three years. The reorganization will foster a smaller,
more mobile and technologically adept fighting force. Currently, Russia
spends less than $20 billion a year on defense, or about 10 percent of the
U.S. figure.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Russia/Chechnya</FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 8 </B>A bomb
kills nine Russian policemen when their vehicle is blown up in Dagestan,
which borders Chechnya; in Ingushetia, which also borders Chechnya, a
worker for the international relief organization Doctors Without Borders
is kidnapped; and five Chechens are also kidnapped from a bus going from
North Ossetia to Chechnya.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+1">THE
FORMER YUGOSLAVIA</FONT></FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Bosnia</FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 3 </B>Claiming
that the Bosnian Serb Parliament takes its orders from former leader
Radovan Karadzic, Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic dissolves
Parliament "to protect the state from total disaster." But the
hard-liners who support Mr. Karadzic immediately challenge the decision.</FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 4 </B>The Bosnian
Serb parliament meets to debate whether Mrs. Plavsic should be removed
from office but comes to no decision. British troops patrol the streets of
Banja Luka to protect Mrs. Plavsic, who fears for her life as a result of
her power struggle with Radovan Karadzic.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 7 </B>While NATO
leaders in Madrid discuss how to resolve the problem of Radovan Karadzic's
continued control of the Bosnian Serb enclave, Mr. Karadzic "hides in
plain sight" in his Pale stronghold, emboldened by the fact that the
31,000-men NATO force is unwilling to hunt war criminals like Dr. Karadzic
for fear of reprisals. According to a senior NATO commander, "there
was a moment, right after the Dayton agreement, when Karadzic could have
been seized with little risk to our troops," but that moment slipped
by, a "terrible mistake that could have avoided many of the problems
we face today."</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 10</B> In
northwestern Bosnia, NATO peacekeeping forces led by British troops and
with United States support arrest Milan Kovacevic, a Bosnian Serb war
crimes suspect, and kill in a shootout another suspect, Simo Drljaca. Both
men were viewed as "prime architects of ethnic cleansing"
against Bosnian Muslims and Croats in the Priedor area of Bosnia. This is
the first attempt by NATO troops to arrest any of the suspects at large.</FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 11 </B>In the
wake of the NATO arrests of war crimes suspects, Bosnian Serbs increase
the protection of their senior officials around Pale.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 15</B> Although
France is favorable to arresting prominent Bosnian Serbs charged with war
crimes, it declines to take part in another NATO raid it judged too risky.
French military officers command an international force that controls the
territory around Pale, the Bosnian Serb capital, where many Bosnian Serb
suspects live.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 16</B> U.N.
officials report that Bosnian Serb authorities have threatened to
retaliate against NATO soldiers if they try to arrest more war crimes
suspects.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 17</B> British
soldiers detain four men suspected of setting off three blasts at a
British base in Bosnia. Following the arrest of a Bosnian Serb war crimes
suspect and the killing of another one by NATO officials on July 10, the
incident is part of a campaign by Serbian nationalists "to test
NATO's reaction to retaliatory attacks."</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 20</B> After
speaking publicly against former president Radovan Karadzic, Bosnian Serb
President Biljana Plavsic is expelled from the ruling ultra-nationalist
Serb Democratic Party. The party is run by hard-liners loyal to Mr.
Karadzic who also want Mrs. Plavsic to step down as President.</FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 21</B> President
Plavsic vows to step down only if she is voted out by referendum, as
required by the Constitution.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>NY Times, July 25</B>
Defying the Dayton agreements, the Muslim-led government in Sarajevo has
declared the homes of thousands of Jews, Serbs, and Croats, and even
Muslims who left during the war, abandoned and has given these homes to
high government officials. With almost 40 percent of the houses handled in
this way, the original residents, usually non-Muslims, are officially
prevented from returning home.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 27 </B>Although
NATO troops have long claimed that their mandate does not include
protection of returning Bosnian refugees, they have informally started to
help Croatian and Muslim families to return safely to their houses around
Brcko, an area of Bosnia under Serb control.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Yugoslavia</FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 15</B> President
Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia is elected President of the Yugoslav
federation by its Parliament. Although the job is largely ceremonial, Mr.
Milosevic is expected to try to turn it into a position of power.</FONT></FONT>
</P>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+1">WESTERN
EUROPE/EASTERN EUROPE</FONT></FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000">European
Union Expansion</FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 16</B> Jacques
Santer, the European Commission's president, invites five former Communist
nations--Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Estonia, and Slovenia--to begin
negotiations toward membership in the European Union.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000">NATO
Expansion</FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 2 </B>Eliminating
a problem within the Alliance before the Madrid Summit,<B> </B>France
announces its willingness to abide by President Clinton's wish to limit
NATO expansion to Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, although it
reaffirms that Romania and Slovenia also fulfill the conditions for
joining.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 7</B> The Summit
in Madrid starts with the leaders of the 16 NATO nations ready to extend
invitations to at least three former Communist countries.</FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 8</B> NATO
invites Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary to join the Alliance "in
time for its 50<SUP>th</SUP> anniversary in 1999." Allied leaders
commission a detailed study on the cost of expansion, estimated so far by
the Clinton Administration at $35 billion. They also hail Spain's decision
to join the NATO military structure although some key technical military
issues are still unresolved.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 8, Reported in NY
Times of July 21</B> Eighteen months after Greece and Turkey almost went
to war over islets in the eastern Aegean Sea, Greek Prime Minister Costas
Simitis and Turkish President Suleyman Demirel sign a joint communique
that appears to be a breakthrough toward reconciliation. For example,
Foreign Minister Theodoros Pangalos, who called the Turks "international
criminals" a year ag,o now talks of a "future" when Turkey
will be "a very important partner" for Greece.</FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 9 </B>NATO
leaders and Ukraine sign a "Charter on a Distinctive Partnership,"
an agreement to strengthen ties with Ukraine similar to the one the
Alliance signed in May with Russia. Meeting also with the 28 members of
NATO's Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (a diverse group composed of
former Communist countries and countries such as Sweden, Austria, and
Switzerland that have developed a relationship with the Alliance), NATO
leaders promise to work toward increased security. Finally, as a necessary
step before submitting the decision to national parliaments for
ratification, NATO leaders discuss the cost of adding three new members to
the Alliance, estimated by NATO experts to be $1.3 billion a year over 13
years.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 10</B> In Warsaw
after the conclusion of the Madrid Summit, President Clinton celebrates
Poland's new ties with the Alliance, telling the Poles that their nation "is
coming home."</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 11 </B>Although
President Clinton blocked Romania from joining NATO in the first round, he
is greeted with enthusiasm by crowds in Bucharest and welcomed by
President Emil Constantinescu. Calling Romania "one of the strongest
candidates," Mr. Clinton promises that Romania's time to join the
Alliance will come "if the country continues on the path of political
and economic change."</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 12 </B>Ending his
European trip in Denmark, President Clinton keeps the door open to "some
international presence" that would be required in Bosnia after the
departure of the current NATO troops next June.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Non-Nuclear
Arms Agreement</FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 23</B> The U.S.,
Russia, and 28 other nations agree on the outline of a treaty that would
limit the number of tanks and other conventional weapons in Europe on a
country-by-country basis. Ceilings for these non-nuclear weapons would be
especially low in Central Europe, thus removing most of the threat to
Russia. The agreement would further the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe
Treaty which placed an overall ceiling on conventional weapons within NATO
and within the Warsaw Pact.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Turkey</FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>NY Times, July 13</B>
Before Turkey can join the West as a full partner, Western strategists
agree that it must change the way it treats prisoners and dissenters.
Eighty percent of all human rights abuses reported stem from the war being
waged by Kurdish nationalists in the southeast, where tens of thousands of
people have been killed. Abuses include torture, "mystery killings,"
and bans on statements deemed to threaten national unity.</FONT></FONT>
</P>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 29 </B>Fifteen
thousand people protest a plan of the new secular government of Mesut
Yilmaz to curb religious education. The legislation would in effect close
Islamic junior high schools by increasing compulsory secular education
from five to eight years.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000">United
Nations</FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 16</B> In order
to make the United Nations more efficient, U.N. Secretary General Kofi
Annan announces its restructuring. Among the proposed changes is the
creation, for the first time, of a post of Deputy Secretary General.</FONT></FONT>
</P>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="+1">U.S.A./NASA/Russia</FONT></FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>NY Times, July 6</B>
According to a new book, <I>War Scare,</I> by American security expert
Peter Pry, Russia confused a research rocket for a NATO missile in 1995
(the rocket, part of a NASA-financed project, was launched from Norway).
In one of the most serious episodes in the history of nuclear weapons,
Russia, fearing a nuclear attack, made all preparations for starting a
nuclear war except actually launching a nuclear strike.</FONT></FONT> </P>
<CENTER><B><I><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000">War Crimes
Tribunal</FONT></FONT></I></B></CENTER>
<P><FONT FACE="Palatino"><FONT COLOR="#000000"><B>July 14</B> The U.N.
war crimes tribunal condemns Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic to a 20-year prison
term for his part "in an ethnic cleansing campaign against Muslim
civilians during the Bosnian war in 1992."</FONT></FONT> </P>
<P></P>
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<P><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#083250"><FONT SIZE="-2">Copyright @ Center for Strategic
Decision Research 1998</FONT></FONT> <BR><FONT COLOR="#083250"><FONT SIZE="-2">Strategic Decision Press</FONT></FONT>
</P>
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