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MAY 29, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 21
Milestones
BY PENNY CAMPBELL
DIED. ANDRZEJ SZCZYPIORSKI, 76, Polish writer and advocate of Polish-German reconciliation; in Warsaw. A member of the democracy movement before the 1989 fall of the communist regime, Szczypiorski was elected in 1989 to the first Senate in a democratic Poland. He wrote more than 20 books, including a 1986 novel, The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman, which won the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, among other awards.
DIED. KEIZO OBUCHI, 62, former Prime Minister of Japan whose self-effacing manner and lack of charisma belied astute political skills, after six weeks in a coma following a stroke; in Tokyo. First elected to the Japanese parliament at the age of 26, Obuchi served as Chief Cabinet Secretary and Foreign Minister in Liberal Democrat-led governments before becoming Prime Minister in July 1998. He defied critics who saw him as a political lightweight, implementing a massive public-spending program that halted Japan's economic slide, though it also widened the fiscal deficit.
PLEADED GUILTY. GEORGES RUGGIU, 42, Belgian journalist, to inciting killings during the 1994 genocide through his broadcasts on Rwanda's infamous "Hate Radio" station; in Arusha, Tanzania. Ruggiu admitted to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda that he "directly and publicly incited murders."
RESIGNED. GENERAL WIRANTO, 52, former Indonesian armed forces chief, from the Cabinet post he was suspended from three months ago over his alleged links to last year's military-backed violence in East Timor; in Jakarta. The general stepped down after being questioned for seven hours at the Attorney General's office on his role in the bloodshed. Earlier this year, a government commission and a United Nations inquiry each found that Wiranto, as military commander, bore ultimate responsibility for atrocities committed by the armed forces and the militias they backed in the former Indonesian province. He contends he did all he could to stop the conflict.
BORN. To CHERIE BOOTH, 45, high-powered barrister, and Tony Blair, 47, British Prime Minister: a fourth child (a boy); in London.
CAPTURED. FODAY SANKOH, 63, leader of Sierra Leone's notorious rebel group the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which took nearly 500 United Nations peacekeepers hostage in early May; in Freetown. The peacekeepers, some 240 of whom have been released, are in Sierra Leone to help implement the abortive 1999 Lomé agreement on which the RUF has reneged.
RESIGNED. ANTONIO ALVARADO, 48, as Nicaragua's Defense Minister, after being stripped of his nationality; in Managua. Alvarado became a U.S. citizen during his country's civil war in the 1980s and applied to recover his Nicaraguan citizenship upon returning 10 years ago. His application was refused for allegedly containing "falsehoods." A potential candidate in the November 2001 presidential elections, Alvarado has accused the government of trying to impede his candidacy.
Time Capsule
It has been 40 years since American
FRANCIS GARY POWERS,
flying a U-2 spy plane, was shot down over the Soviet Union during what the U.S. government eventually admitted was a routine intelligence mission.
"In 1956 [the Lockheed U-2 program] recruited Air Force 1st Lieut. Francis Powers. Powers was a plane-happy youngster born in the Cumberland mountain country in Kentucky, near the Virginia border. His father, Oliver Powers, 55, who owns a shoe-repair shop in Norton [Virginia], reveled in telling callers last week that Francis got his first plane ride at the age of 14 [and] came back to announce: 'I left my heart up there, Pap, and I'm goin' back to git it'... In the grim gamesmanship of the cold war, Khrushchev scored the U-2 missions as omens of aggression... The bagging of a U-2 was a moment that Russia's bosses had long looked forward to, and Khrushchev understandably made the most of it."
--Time, May 16, 1960
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