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January 1999, Europe
January 1
The European Union launches its single currency, the euro.
Eleven of the EU's 15 members are participating in the single
currency. Britain, Denmark, Sweden, and Greece are not
participating. Germany assumes the rotating presidency of the
European Union. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder
declares job creation the primary goal of the six-month
leadership.
January 3
British Prime Minister Tony Blair asks South African President
Nelson Mandela to help negotiate the handover of two Libyans
accused of blowing up a Pan Am jet over Scotland in 1988.
Mandela earlier played a key role in convincing the United States
and Britain to support a neutral venue for the trial. Libya has
agreed in principle to the trial of the two men before a panel of
Scottish judges in the Netherlands.
January 4
Charlie Whelan, the spokesman for Britain's treasury chief,
resigns after newspapers speculate that he leaked a story that
led to the resignations of Trade and Industry Secretary Peter
Mandelson and Paymaster General Geoffrey Robinson.
Mandelson and Robinson resigned in December amid reports
that Robinson provided Mandelson a $627,000 home loan.
January 4
Former Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller announces her
center-right True Path party will back a minority government led
by Bulent Ecevit. Ciller had previously rejected such a coalition.
She says she will not support premier-designate Yalim Erez, the
man picked to form a government after Ecevit's first attempt
failed.
January 4
The UN war-crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, rules
there is sufficient evidence for Bosnian authorities to prosecute
Fikret Abdic, a Muslim warlord during the Bosnian war. The
Muslim part of the Bosnian government accuses Abdic of
genocide and war crimes after he joined the Serbs in fighting for
control of Bihac in 1997.
January 4
Talks aimed at strengthening the 1972 Biological Weapons
Convention resume in Geneva, Switzerland. Negotiators from
more than 60 countries have been meeting periodically to try to
agree on verification procedures for the convention.
January 4
German prosecutors charge a Kurdish man, known only as
Hassan A., with arson in connection with a 1993 campaign of
attacks against Turkish interests in Germany. Hassan allegedly
directed activities for the Kurdistan Workers Party in the German
town of Dortmund at the time of the attacks.
January 4
Danish anti-abortionists unveil a granite memorial to the 500,000
fetuses they say have been aborted since the procedure was
made legal in Denmark in 1973.
January 5
Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema holds an emergency
meeting of Cabinet ministers to discuss a recent surge in mob
violence. The meeting comes three days after mob boss Angelo
Mirabella and four of his associates are killed in a bar massacre
in Sicily. Mirabella is the head of a new Mafia clan trying to
muscle in on the turf of older gangs.
January 5
Great Britain's Royal Mint introduces a coin in memory of the late
Princess Diana. The coin features a portrait of Diana and has a
value of £5, or about $8.
January 7
Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi begins a three-nation
European tour to discuss with European leaders ways to improve
cooperation on currency exchange between industrialized
nations. Obuchi meets with leaders in France before traveling to
Italy and Germany.
January 8
South African police fire birdshot and rubber bullets at Muslim
protesters just before British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrives to
award medals to British soldiers assisting the South African
military. The demonstrators are protesting the recent U.S.-British
air strikes against Iraq.
January 8
Several thousand Romanian miners striking for higher wages
march through Petrosani, Romania, a coal town, after the
government announces its plans to close 37 money-losing metal
mines.
January 8
Members of the Kosovo Liberation Army kill three Serbian
policemen in Dulje in the Serbian province of Kosovo. The attack
prompts a buildup in the area by the Yugoslav army.
January 11
Bulent Ecevit becomes Turkey's sixth prime minister in three
years one day after Parliament approves his minority
government, which is composed of his small Democratic Left
Party and three independent parties.
January 13
France submits to the UN Security Council a proposal to end the
oil embargo on Iraq while ensuring it cannot buy new weapons.
The plan would replace the regime of hunting out Iraq's existing
weapons program with a long-term monitoring and prevention
system against any effort to develop new weapons of mass
destruction.
January 13
Great Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary, Mo Mowlam,
announces that her government is willing to hand over powers to
local politicians in March, fulfilling the vision of last year's peace
accord. However, Protestant and Catholic leaders must first
overcome differences over the future of Irish Republican Army
weapons.
January 14
Spanish police recover $35 million in stolen paintings, including
works by Picasso, Rembrandt, and Goya, and arrest two people
suspected of trying to trade the art for cocaine. The suspects are
arrested after leading police on a high-speed chase in the
Valencia region of Spain.
January 15
Serb forces massacre 45 ethnic Albanian civilians in the village
of Racak within Kosovo. Elsewhere in Kosovo, Serb forces clash
with ethnic Albanians, resulting in the death of at least 15 rebels.
In separate incidents, two international monitors are shot and
wounded.
January 15
In Bosnia-Herzegovina, 500 American soldiers receive medals
for their service with the NATO-led peacekeeping force in
Bosnia.
January 16
More than 1,000 people march through the streets of
Freyming-Merlebach, France, protesting the death of a police
officer who died in a dispute with a motorist. The march ends a
week of violence by youths in which France's leaders call for
measures targeting juvenile delinquents. France's juvenile crime
rate rose by 11 percent in 1998.
January 17
Ambassadors from Germany, Britain, Greece, France, and Italy
return to Belarus, seven months after a dispute over sewer
service to their residences caused them to leave. The Belarusian
government evicted the ambassadors from their residences last
year, saying it needed to repair the plumbing and sewage system
in the diplomatic compound. The European Union nations said
their eviction violated the Vienna convention.
January 18
Dimitra Liani-Papandreou, the widow of late Greek Premier
Andreas Papandreou, is charged with fraud and embezzlement
of public funds.
January 18
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar completes the first
shuffle of his 15-member Cabinet since coming to power in 1996.
Javier Arenas becomes Popular Party Secretary-General.
Mariano Rajoy becomes Education and Culture Minister.
Esperanza Aguirre is named to head the Senate.
January 18
A three-mile long oil slick enters Bulgarian coastal waters,
contaminating Bulgarian river banks. The origin of the slick is not
immediately known.
January 19
Greek riot police fire tear gas to break up a protest by student
demonstrators throwing gasoline bombs and rocks to protest
education reforms. The students oppose a stricter school exam
system. Teachers who are upset by a new performance-based
hiring system support the students and announce strikes set for
January 21 and January 25. Student protesters occupy more than
500 of the country's 3,140 state high schools, where classes have
been disrupted since November. The government says it is
willing to discuss the reforms and possibly modify them once
students return to school.
January 19
Slovakia's new government survives a no-confidence vote
proposed by the opposition party of former Prime Minister
Vladimir Meciar, which accuses Interior Minister Ladislav Pittner
of causing a crime increase by failing to fight organized crime.
January 19
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic names Vuk Draskovic of
the Serbian Renewal Movement as Yugoslavia's deputy premier.
Draskovic is a former opposition leader.
January 20
Britain's Labor government publishes plans to remove the voting
rights of aristocrats with inherited seats in the unelected House of
Lords.
January 21
A British Royal Air Force bomber collides with a small civilian
aircraft, tearing it apart before it bursts into a fireball. The four
people aboard both planes are killed.
January 22
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees releases a report on
the number of people applying for asylum in European countries
last year. The report says the number rose by 27 percent in 1998,
bringing the total to 366,000. About 100,000 of them came from
Yugoslavia. Others were from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Turkey. The
majority of them went to Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands.
January 22
Turkey deploys a Patriot antimissile battery provided by the U.S.
as extra protection against a potential Iraqi attack. The unit is
deployed at Incirlik Air Base, which hosts U.S. and British
warplanes enforcing the no-fly zones over northern and southern
Iraq.
January 22
In France's largest trial ever, a court convenes in a prison
gymnasium and convicts 107 people on charges of supporting
Islamic insurgents in Algeria. The court acquits 31 of the 138
defendants, all arrested in police sweeps in 1994 and 1995. The
majority of the 70 defense lawyers and many defendants
boycotted the proceedings to protest the mass trial. Defense
lawyers say most defendants have only a passing connection to
the three network leaders and separate trials should have been
held.
January 22
Desperate to end five days of violence, the Romanian
government reaches a deal to avert a state of emergency with
striking coal miners. One day earlier, Romanian President Emil
Constantinescu threatens to curtail civil rights across the country
after the miners injure hundreds of riot police during several days
of street battles. The deal gives miners a 35 percent wage
increase and ensures that two money-losing mines remain open.
January 22
Portugal returns valuable silver objects to Spain, more than 23
years after they were stolen from the Spanish Embassy in Lisbon.
January 22
A court in Milan, Italy, convicts former Italian Premier Bettino
Craxi and 20 other people of corruption charges in connection
with bribes and kickbacks involving the state electrical company.
Craxi is sentenced to five years and five months in prison.
January 22
France's Constitutional Council rules that President Jacques
Chirac cannot face criminal charges as long as he is president,
saying that the president cannot be brought to trial except in
cases of treason. Chirac is under investigation for his role in an
alleged employment scandal during his 1988-1993 tenure as
mayor of Paris.
January 23
The UNITA rebel group in Angola announces it is cutting off all
ties with the Portuguese government, after Portuguese Foreign
Minister Jaime Gama blames UNITA for Angola's return to civil
war. Portugal ruled Angola until granting independence in 1975.
January 23
Polish farmers demanding a ban on food imports lift their
blockade at a German border crossing at Swiecko after the
Polish government calls the demonstration illegal and threatens
to use force to lift the blockade.
January 23
About 10,000 French policemen march through Paris to protest a
plan to redeploy their forces and to demand greater resources to
do their jobs.
January 24
A breakaway faction of France's far-right National Front Party
makes official its split with the party's longtime leader,
Jean-Marie Le Pen, by electing his rival, Bruno Megret, as the
movement's president. The conflict between Le Pen and Megret
goes back to last summer when Le Pen suggested his wife might
replace him as head of the National Front.
January 25
Bosnian Serb legislators reject the nomination of Brane Miljus for
premier. Miljus is the choice of hard-line President Nikola
Poplasen. The moderate camp wants to keep the current
premier, Milorad Dodik. It is the second unsuccessful attempt to
elect a new government since elections last September failed to
give either hard-liners or moderates a majority in the chamber.
January 26
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder leads a government
delegation in talks with officials from German power industries to
work out a timetable for shutting down Germany's nuclear industry
and resolving the question of how to dispose of toxic nuclear
waste.
January 26
Thousands of Polish farmers block 130 roads across Poland to
demand higher prices for their pork and milk. The farmers accuse
the government of allowing meat and grain imports from the West
to lower prices for Polish goods. Police declare the blockades
illegal and photograph protesters for identification checks.
January 26
The UN Conference on Disarmament is held in Switzerland.
Negotiators from 61 countries take steps to limit nuclear
weapons, including drafting a ban on testing them. UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan urges the negotiators to ban sales
of land mines and to prevent a nuclear arms race in outer space.
January 26
A Yugoslav state court orders the opposition newspaper, Srpska
Rec, to pay $15,000 to Marko Milosevic, the son of Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic, for slandering him. In 1996, the
paper ran a series of articles that described Milosevic's allegedly
shady business deals.
January 26
A French appeals court clears former Prime Minister Alain Juppe
of embezzlement charges but rules that he will remain under
investigation for his alleged role in an employment scandal.
Juppe is charged with profiting from a system under which
workers on the Paris city hall payroll were actually working for the
Rally for the Republic Party.
January 27
French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin announces measures the
French government will take to tackle growing violence among
France's youth. France will put 7,000 more police in the streets,
double the number of deputy prosecutors, and reduce the time it
takes for courts to respond to crimes.
January 27
Macedonian Foreign Minister Aleksander Dimitrov signs a
communique in Taipei, Taiwan, officially recognizing Taiwan. The
agreement angers China, which considers Taiwan a renegade
province.
January 28
A Catholic woman and her four young children escape a bomb
attack on their home in Dungannon, Northern Ireland. The incident
comes one day after Eamon Collins, the Irish Republican Army's
former intelligence officer who wrote a book criticizing the
organization, is found dead on the side of a road.
January 28 - 29
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright travels to London and
Paris for talks with the British and French foreign ministers on
how to deal with rising tensions in Iraq and Kosovo.
January 29
More than 100,000 German industrial workers walk off their jobs
in a pay dispute between employers and the IG Metall union. The
union is demanding a 6.5 percent wage increase. Employers
offer only a two percent increase and a one-time payment of 0.5
percent of annual wages.
January 29
Ethnic Albanian rebels in the Serbian province of Kosovo kill a
policeman. In retaliation, the police storm the village of Rogovo,
where the policeman was killed, killing 23 ethnic Albanian
civilians.
January 30
Indonesian envoys arrive in Lisbon, Portugal, to set up a
diplomatic post, fulfilling an agreement reached during
negotiations with Portugal over the disputed territory of East
Timor. A Portuguese envoy opens a similar post in Indonesia.
January 31
The Taiwanese government promises Macedonia more than
$300 million for its decision to establish diplomatic ties with
Taiwan. The money will be provided over four years to help
Macedonia overcome a budget crisis.
To read another entry in the timeline, please return to the Timeline page and select a region of the world, month and year.
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