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An eruption of violence in East Timor on Sep. 1, 1999, following a 99% turnout in the independence referendum on Aug. 30, 1999, prompted anxious calls for international military intervention. Much of the East Timorese capital, Dili, descended into anarchy as armed militiamen loyal to Indonesia rampaged around the city burning buildings and shooting pro-independence supporters. At least three people died in running battles outside the United Nations compound where hundreds of people had sought refuge. The referendum is expected to produce an overwhelming vote in favour of independence from Indonesia.

Russia and the Group of Seven leading industrialised countries reached agreement on Jun. 8, 1999, on a draft United Nations (UN) resolution that could bring the war in Yugoslavia to an end within 48 hours. China will play a key role in determining how quickly the resolution, which contains all of Nato's key demands, is passed by the UN security council. The diplomatic breakthrough led to a resumption of the deadlocked talks in Macedonia over the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo, Yugoslavia. However Nato stressed that the bombing would continue until the Serbs complied with the peace deal agreed on Jun. 3, 1999.

UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook declared on Jun. 7, 1999, that negotiators were 90% of the way towards reaching agreement on the faltering peace deal for Kosovo, Yugoslavia. Russia and the foreign ministers of the G7 leading industrial countries are expected to agree a United Nations security council resolution on Jun. 8, 1999, backing a peacekeeping force for Kosovo. Meanwhile Finnish Pres. Martti Ahtisaari, the European Union's Balkans envoy, expressed confidence on Jun. 7, 1999, that Yugoslav Pres. Slobodan Milosevic would abide by the terms of the peace agreement.

US officials rejected a six-point German peace plan for Yugoslavia on Apr. 14, 1999, leaving European Union leaders struggling to maintain their common front against Yugoslavia. The plan, formally released in Bonn, Germany, on Apr. 14, 1999, provides for a United Nations peacekeeping force, a 24-hour ceasefire, and civilian monitors. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair politely rebuffed the plan by insisting that any peace proposals have to be fully in accord with Nato's demands. These include the full withdrawal of Serb troops from Kosovo, Yugoslavia.

The two Libyans accused of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in Dec. 1988 arrived in the Netherlands on Apr. 5, 1999, following a long and exhausting diplomatic and legal struggle to bring them to trial. UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook's decision to take the politically risky and legally bold step of offering Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gadafy a no-jury Scottish trial on neutral ground eventually paid off. Libya surrendered the suspects, Lamen Khalifah Fhimah and Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, having been guaranteed that United Nations sanctions would be lifted.

US Pres. Bill Clinton vowed that Nato's air strikes against the Serbs would continue after Western leaders rejected outright a six-point peace plan put forward by Yugoslav Pres. Slobodan Milosevic on Mar. 30, 1999. A mediation mission by Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov prompted an offer from Milosevic to partially withdraw his troops from Kosovo, Yugoslavia, if Nato stopped its air campaign. UK Defence Secretary George Robertson argued that the ethnic cleansing being perpetrated by Serbian paramilitary forces in Kosovo would escalate if there were any halt in the Nato bombing.

US intelligence officials are certain that Iraqi officials working for Pres Saddam Hussein tried to recruit terrorist Osama bin Laden in Dec 1998. Bin Laden is the most wanted man in the West and the world's most prolific terrorist, and a link-up with Saddam would be a nightmare for the West. Attacks attributed to bin Laden include the Aug 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

King Hussein achieved much in the 47 years that he ruled Jordan, and as his legacy he leaves a strong country which has survived both internal and external crises. When Hussein became king, Jordan suffered from social divisions, economic problems and seemed at risk from its stronger neighbours. Jordan is now a much more stable country. Hussein was a pragmatic man who played a major part in the Middle East peace process. He has often been seen as a personification of Jordan, but with great dignity tried to prepare his people for a future without him.

The people of Baghdad, Iraq, remained sanguine on Dec. 18, 1998, despite a second night of bombings that inflicted serious damage to a number of buildings, including one said to be the Iraqi government's military-industrial headquarters. One Iraqi explained that ordinary people are not fleeing for the countryside because they feel that the Americans are making a special effort not to target civilians. Fear of looting has also made them reluctant to leave their homes. Some Iraqis believe that the bombing will end with the start of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan on Dec. 18, 1998.

Betty Thomas, whose 29-year-old daughter and 20-month-old granddaughter were among the 270 people who died in Britain's worst air disaster, the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988, reflects that the victims were all so young. The average age was just 25. Jim Swire, a general practitioner whose 23-year-old daughter was among the victims, recognises that his continuing crusade to find out the truth about the disaster is his way of coping with his bereavement. Both Swire and Thomas have found comfort in friendships with relatives of other victims of the tragedy.

US Pres. Bill Clinton had already ordered US forces to launch missile attacks on Iraq when he was told in the early hours of Nov. 14, 1998, that Iraq had sent a letter to United Nations (UN) secretary-general Kofi Annan promising to allow the resumption of UN weapons inspections. Clinton put the attacks on hold but, on seeing the text of the letter and its two-page annex, concluded with his advisers that the supposed retreat was not as clear as been implied. Iraq subsequently divorced the contents of the annex from the letter and clarified its climbdown in two further letters.

US Pres. Bill Clinton and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair stressed their readiness on Nov. 15, 1998, to launch air strikes against Iraq if Pres. Saddam Hussein does not cooperate fully with United Nations (UN) weapons inspectors. US bombers were already on their way to their targets on Nov. 14, 1998, when Iraq agreed to resume the cooperation with the UN Special Commission, Unscom, which it had dramatically broken off on Oct. 31, 1998. British and American sources made it clear on Nov. 15, 1998, that forthcoming searches by Unscom inspectors would be highly intrusive.

US Pres. Bill Clinton and secretary of state Madeleine Albright repeated on Nov. 13, 1998, that the aim of the military build-up in the Gulf region is to allow Unscom to resume monitoring the destruction of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capability. However many in the US Air Force doubt whether the planned air strikes will even come close to achieving the Pentagon's stated aim of destroying what the Unscom monitors have failed to find. Experts cannot agree on further goals although any military campaign would be followed by action designed to break Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein's hold on power.

Abbas al-Janabi describes Uday Hussein, son of Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein, as a monster and a sadist. Janabi, who has been granted political asylum in the West after fleeing Iraq in Feb. 1998, worked as Uday's private secretary for 15 years. Janabi reveals that it is normal for Uday to treat even the people he trusts badly. He cites an incident in 1991 when one of Uday's bodyguards pulled one of his front teeth out with a pair of pliers. Janabi points out that Uday has become even crueller and more erratic since a failed assassination attempt in 1996 left him with a pronounced limp in one leg.

UK Home Secretary Jack Straw hinted on Oct. 22, 1998, that former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet, who is under arrest in a London, England, hospital, could be sent home on compassionate grounds. Pinochet's arrest at the request of the Spanish government which wants to extradite him in connection with the murder of Spanish citizens in Chile when he was head of state is threatening to turn into a diplomatic crisis. The growing controversy threatens to overshadow the visit to Britain of Argentinian Pres. Carlos Menem in the week of Oct. 26, 1998.

Americans began to discover who their president really is as the media reported every last detail of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr's report at the weekend of Sep. 12, 1998. Americans are particularly disgusted by the pattern of deceit revealed by the Starr report. They are angered by Pres. Bill Clinton's selfishness in lying to one of his senior spin doctors, Sidney Blumenthal. He told Blumenthal that Monica Lewinsky was threatening him and behaving 'like a stalker' because he had rebuffed her. The way in which Clinton uses word-play to avoid telling the truth also arouses public hostility.

Nearly 100,000 residents of the UK's 13 Dependent Territories are to be granted full British citizenship without their homelands having to abandon their strict immigration controls. An agreement in principle between Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and Home Secretary Jack Straw gives the people of the remnants of empire the right to live and work in the UK and travel in the European Union without visas. The agreement does not grant mainland Britons a reciprocal right to settle in the Dependent Territories. The final details of the agreement are expected to be settled on Jul. 16, 1998.

The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) will hold its annual conference in Burkina Faso on Jun. 8, 1998, in sombre mood, the escalating conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia underlining the gap between the organisation's lofty principles and its performance. The meeting of Africa's 54 leaders has been billed a 'summit of change' but unfinished business remains in the form of manoeuvring over the Lockerbie bombing affair and the problem of the Saharan Arab Democratic Republic, the Moroccan-occupied former Spanish Sahara. An African diplomat points out that the OAU needs political will to move forwards.

British nurses Deborah Parry and Lucille McLauchlan remain officially guilty of the murder of Australian nurse Yvonne Gilford in Saudi Arabia, despite King Fahd's decision, announced on May 19, 1998, to commute their sentence. Labour Member of Parliament George Galloway lodged a complaint with the Press Complaints Commission after it emerged that the Express and the Mirror had made successful five- and six-figure bids for the two nurses' stories. The nurses' murder conviction stands despite their early release from prison and strict rules forbid newspapers to allow criminals to profit from their offences.

UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook strongly denied that Foreign Office officials had been involved in any kind of conspiracy as he answered an emergency question on the arms to Sierra Leone affair tabled by shadow foreign affairs spokesman Michael Howard on May 12, 1998. Cook declared that he had more faith in his officials than in British mercenary company Sandline International. He promised that the truth would be established by the Foreign Office-instigated investigation that will follow the Customs and Excise inquiry into allegations that Sandline breached a United Nations arms embargo.

An international operation to restore the democratically elected government of Sierra Leone has sparked the UK Foreign Office's biggest crisis since Labour came to power in May 1997. The forces that overthrew the junta led by Major Johnny Paul Koroma included mercenaries supplied by London, England-based 'military consultants' Sandline International. Sandline also provided 30 tonnes of guns and ammunition in apparent breach of a United Nations ban on arms supplies. Sandline claimed on May 8, 1998, that British government officials were fully aware of what was being planned.

US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright took steps on May 5, 1998, to prevent the collapse of the Middle East peace process by issuing what was effectively an ultimatum after two days of talks in London, England, failed to produce any real progress. Albright invited Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Pres. Yasser Arafat to a meeting in Washington, DC, on May 11, 1998, but only if they first reach agreement on the scale of Israel's withdrawal from the occupied West Bank. Albright insisted that the US had no intention of watering down its 'bridging' ideas.

United Nations (UN) secretary-general Kofi Annan was confident on Feb. 23, 1998, of winning international backing for the deal he has struck with Iraq. However US Pres. Bill Clinton made it clear that force would be used if Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein again prevented UN inspectors from fulfilling their mission of inspecting all suspect weapons sites in Iraq. Meanwhile UK Prime Minister Tony Blair stressed the need for a new Security Council resolution giving the UN the right to respond by any necessary means should Saddam break his word.

The World Cup will almost certainly be the biggest international event of 1998 but the year will also see Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein testing the will of the Gulf War coalition. The European Union will begin accession negotiations with five former communist countries in Mar. 1998 and up to 11 of its 15 member states will fix the terms for membership of a single European currency in May 1998. Latin America's liberalized economies are expected to enjoy strong growth in 1998 while the slowdown of the former tiger economies of South-east Asia will accelerate.

The reputation of the Israeli secret service Mossad as a well-oiled machine staffed by perfect spies suffered a severe blow on Sep. 25, 1997, when an assassination attempt on Khaled Meshal, a leader of Islamic militant group Hamas, went spectacularly wrong. A former Mossad official complains that the feeling that there is peace means that the kind of young people who would have joined Mossad in the days when it was renowned for such exploits as the elimination of Black September terrorists no longer consider it necessary to join the security services.

UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook protested strongly on Sep. 23, 1997, at the punishment handed down to Lucille McLauchlan, one of two British nurses accused of murdering Australian colleague Yvonne Gilford in Saudi Arabia in Dec. 1996. The Saudi courts sentenced McLaughlin to eight years in prison and 500 lashes, a punishment Cook described as totally unacceptable in the modern world. Saudi Arabia's envoy in London, England, Ghazi Gosaibi, had earlier declared that Saudi Arabia had no intention of changing its judicial system to appease bleeding heart liberals.

Business leaders in Hong Hong are confident of continued prosperity following the territory's handover to China at midnight on Jun. 30, 1997, but prominent Hong Kong-based economist Marc Faber believes that this optimism is misplaced. China and Hong Kong's new leader Tung Chee-hwa have both made it clear that Hong Kong is a primarily economic city that should focus on making money and not argue about politics. Tung has spoken of finding the right balance and returning to good Chinese values but many have warned about the risk of applying the Chinese system in Hong Kong.

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Cabinet ministers have set a cracking pace in the three weeks since Labour's landslide general election victory on May 1, 1997. Chancellor Gordon Brown has handed over control of interest rates to the Bank of England while taking away its banking supervision role. Education Secretary David Blunkett has announced ambitious targets for school improvement and published a plan to provide nursery places for all four-year-olds. Foreign Secretary Robin Cook's mission statement included a promise to put human rights at the centre of Britain's foreign policy.

Britain's new Secretary of State for International Development Clare Short sees her job as trying to stimulate real, sustainable development and eliminate abject poverty rather than simply handing out cash to the world's poorest. Short argued in Nov. 1996 that aid should be managed in such a way as to eliminate the need for emergency aid. Short is aiming for a long-term integrated approach involving bringing debt, trade, the environment, human rights, aid, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund under the scrutiny of her Dept. for International Development.

The winds of change are already blowing through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), a week after Robin Cook became Britain's new Foreign Secretary. An FCO high-flyer comments that Cook and his team will being some badly-needed fizz to a ministry which is possibly the most cautious in Whitehall. Cook's plans, to be revealed in a mission statement delivered at a press conference on May 12, 1997, include making Britain a key player in Europe. Labour has also promised to place a greater emphasis on human rights and to scrutinise arms sales to suspect regimes more closely.

US, German and Italian soldiers came under fire on Mar. 14, 1997, as they helped rescue hundreds of frightened Westerners from the anarchy that has gripped Albania. Rumours that Pres. Sali Berisha had fled the country were denied by the government-controlled media. However prime minister Bashkim Fino announced that the head of the Shik, the secret police loyal to Berisha, had resigned and that the force would now come under government jurisdiction. The fear in Albania's capital Tirana was palpable as heavily armed gunmen roamed its streets.

Israeli Pres. Ezer Weizman is renowned for his gaffes and for displaying bad temper in public, but he has shown himself to be an enthusiastic fighter for peace in the Holy Land. Weizman had been arguing that Israel would never achieve peace unless it dealt with the Palestinians long before Israel signed the peace accord with the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1993. Weizman, a loudmouthed, quick-tempered hawk when he became Menachem Begin's defence minister in 1977, was converted into a dove by Pres. Anwar Sadat of Egypt during the Camp David talks.

The real increase of 3% in funding for hospital and community health services in 1997 announced by Chancellor Kenneth Clarke on Nov. 26, 1996, formed part of a Budget designed to appeal to the inhabitants of Middle England. Clarke not only found an additional 1.6 billion pounds sterling for the National Health Service but announced an extra 830 million pounds sterling for schools and an additional 280 million pounds sterling for further and higher education. However he also announced cuts of nearly 500 million pounds sterling in house building and renovation programmes.

Jordanian Nezar Hindawi is prepared to serve the whole of the 45-year prison sentence he received in Oct. 1986, for his part in a plan to blow up an Israeli El Al Boeing 747. He continues to claim that he was manipulated by the British and the Israelis who wanted to discredit Syria and believes that no-one wants him to be freed. He insists that the bomb, which he gave to his pregnant Irish girlfriend Anne Murphy to carry on board the aircraft, was meant to be found. Hindawi maintains that Murphy, with whom he has had no contact for 10 years, will one day understand the whole story.

David Watts, the lawyer who has been advising the six Iraqi women detained after the Iraqi hijackers of the Sudan Airways jet surrendered at Stansted Airport, England, spoke on Aug. 30, 1996, of the women's plight. The women, who are related to murdered dissidents who played a prominent part in the abortive uprising by Shi'ite Muslim rebels in Basra, Iraq, in Mar. 1991, claim that the hijack took them totally by surprise. The women's lives have been in constant danger since they fled Iraq about four years ago to hide in a succession of safe houses in Jordan, Yemen and Sudan.

Counter-terrorist FBI agents are preparing to head a criminal investigation of the TWA airplane crash in July 1996, with a terrorist bomb increasingly appearing to be the most likely cause of the crash. The National Transport Advisory Board is still maintaining an 'accident investigation,' but the CIA and FBI believe militant Islamist terrorists could be to blame. The 'Movement for Islamic Change' gave a warning just prior to the explosion, with this group also responsible for killing US military personnel in Saudi Arabia. American extremists are also considered potential suspects.

People along a 20-mile stretch of eastern Long Island, NY, were trying to come to terms on Jul. 18, 1996, with the horror of the explosion on TWA Flight 800 which they witnessed as a pyrotechnic spectacle on Jul. 17, 1996. One woman describes seeing a strip of red that was brighter than blood as the Boeing 747 bound for Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris, France, plunged into the Atlantic shortly after take-off from John F. Kennedy airport, New York, NY. The explosion killed all 228 passengers and crew aboard the jumbo jet, including 16 members of the French club at Montoursville High School, PA.

Jewish orthodoxy could become more dominant in Israel following the election victory by Binyamin 'Bibi' Netanyahu, with Netanyahu needing the support of the ultra-orthodox rabbis in order to form a government. The rabbis are pressuring Netanyahu to close nightclubs, restaurants and shops in Jerusalem at weekends. Netanyahu was keen to be seen observing the Jewish Sabbath immediately after the election, but he must also include other dominant religious parties among his allies.

Malcolm Rifkind has made more of an impact in his first seven months as UK Foreign Secretary than anyone had anticipated when he succeeded Douglas Hurd in Jul. 1995, despite having had less opportunity than his predecessor to shine on the world stage. Rifkind's business-like approach and ability to master a brief has impressed civil servants, although there is some criticism of his tendency to focus too much on details. A senior foreign embassy official finds Rifkind considerably more pointed and direct in his remarks than Hurd ever was.

Sir Richard Scott's arms-to-Iraq inquiry report criticises a number of civil servants involved in the Matrix Churchill prosecution and the signing of Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificates by ministers. Scott points to Customs and Excise's inadequate briefing of its senior prosecuting counsel Alan Moses, QC, who is himself criticised over his application to have information withheld from the defence under PII certificates. Rob Young, former head of the Foreign Office's Middle East Dept., is criticised for recommending that a list of exports to Iran and Iraq be withheld from Parliament.