In Review : THE YEAR GONE BY : A bloody showdown ended a rebellion by lawmakers in Russia; Israel and the PLO signed a historic framework for peace; South Africa officially abolished apartheid, and the Balkans remained convulsed by civil war. . . .

FORMER SOVIET UNION

Upheaval in Russia: The birth pangs of Russian democracy were accompanied by bloodshed in 1993. In December, the nation held its first multi-party elections since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. But two months earlier, Moscow witnessed the fiercest unrest it had seen since the revolution.

The conflict at the heart of the year’s events was between President Boris N. Yeltsin’s camp and hard-line members of the Soviet-era Parliament opposed to his economic reforms. Their animosity was so great that in December, 1992, Yeltsin had called for a national referendum in the spring to decide whether he or the lawmakers should be forced to resign. He backed away from that proposal in February--urging “a year of moratorium on all political fistfighting”--but then he dropped a bombshell in March. In a nationally televised address, Yeltsin declared that he was assuming temporary power to rule by decree. He also announced an April 25 referendum asking voters to endorse both his leadership and a law to elect a new Parliament.

In the event, Yeltsin’s arrogation of power was ruled unconstitutional and he backed off yet again, narrowly avoiding impeachment. Then, in April, voters did indeed turn out to express their support for both him and his pro-market economic policies. However, although turnout was higher than expected at more than 60%, it was nowhere near enough to allow for the possibility of a vote forcing renewal of Parliament.

On May Day, the discord in the air crystallized in Moscow, where Communists marching on labor’s traditional holiday clashed with police in a prolonged melee of flying bricks and swinging truncheons that left more than 200 people injured. But it was in September that all hell broke loose. As Parliament continued to resist his reforms, Yeltsin ordered it dissolved and called new parliamentary elections. In response, the deputies named Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi acting president and impeached Yeltsin, and many of them barricaded themselves inside the White House--the legislative headquarters. There they remained for nearly two weeks, until, in early October, their armed supporters attacked the Moscow mayor’s office and the state television broadcasting center. That prompted Yeltsin to call in the army on Oct. 4 to shell the White House with tanks, crushing the rebellion. At least 140 people are thought to have died in the fighting.

In November, Yeltsin outlined a draft constitution strengthening presidential power to be put to voters electing a new Parliament on Dec. 12. And the document did win their approval. The bad news was the startling support--roughly a quarter of the vote--that the misleadingly named Liberal Democratic Party drew in the election. The party’s leader, Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, is a defiant ultranationalist widely characterized as a fascist and an anti-Semite.

Concession in Ukraine: After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine gave its battlefield nuclear weapons back to Russia. But it retained a 1,800-warhead nuclear arsenal that it has refused to return--although its Rada, or Parliament, ratified the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Talks treaty in October. Part of the problem has been the issue of compensation: When the Rada approved the START treaty, it appended 13 separate conditions demanding up to $2.8 billion--a figure the West has rejected as too high. Under increased pressure from Washington and Moscow, however, the nation disclosed in December that it is dismantling some of the most sophisticated weapons in that arsenal--20 of 46 Soviet-made SS-24 missiles. U.S. arms-control experts said the decision was significant because the missiles are so potent and because the step--ordered by President Leonid Kravchuk--came over the objections of some Ukrainian military officers and members of Parliament. Nevertheless, analysts noted that the action still leaves Ukraine with 26 SS-24s carrying a total of 260 nuclear warheads. That’s more than either Britain or France.

MIDEAST

Peace Prospects in Israel: A handshake. That was the defining image as on Sept. 13, on the South Lawn of the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat--urged on by President Clinton--reached out to each other to acknowledge a precedent-shattering peace agreement. The so-called Declaration of Principles had been worked out by Israeli officials in clandestine meetings over the preceding eight months with PLO representatives in Cairo and some European capitals--notably Oslo, where Norwegian Foreign Minister Johan Jorgen Holst was instrumental in helping the two sides bridge their differences. The accords laid the groundwork for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho, to be followed by the transfer of administration of those areas to an elected Palestinian government.

The year’s path toward peace began in Israel in January, when the Knesset, or Parliament, officially authorized contacts between the government and the PLO. That move came despite continuing tension spurred by Rabin’s decision the month before to deport more than 400 suspected Muslim militants to a no-man’s-land in southern Lebanon, where most remained even as the peace accords were signed. In late July, officials’ attention was diverted when the nation launched a weeklong military offensive, dubbed “Operation Accountability,” against Iranian-backed militants in southern Lebanon. Lebanese authorities said 500,000 people were driven from their homes by that operation--which ended with an Israeli cease-fire agreement with Lebanon and neighboring Syria negotiated by the United States. And although Israeli troops were scheduled to begin leaving the occupied territories in mid-December, that date passed without the two sides having settled the terms of the withdrawal, even as attacks and counterattacks continued involving Palestinians and Israeli settlers opposed to the pact.

Still, the signing of the accords in September was followed almost immediately by a “framework” agreement between Israel and Jordan, laying the foundation for a treaty that would officially end the 1967 Six-Day War. In December, Syrian President Hafez Assad made a number of conciliatory moves toward Israel; the deportees who had been languishing in southern Lebanon were allowed to return home, and negotiators for the Vatican and Israel ratified an agreement to establish full diplomatic relations. Hope for peace was still alive.

Continuing Terror in Egypt: Tourism brings Egypt an estimated $3 billion annually, but the year marked the second in a row that Islamic extremists seemed intent on torpedoing it. A case in point: In March, a bomb exploded in a crowded coffeehouse in Cairo’s central square, killing four--including two foreigners--and wounding 15 others, among them two Americans. Senior government officials were also targeted in the wave of terrorism. Prime Minister Atef Sedki, for one, was on his way to work in November when a bomb exploded outside his house just after his motorcade had passed. Sedki was unharmed, but the blast killed a teen-age girl at a nearby school and wounded at least nine other people there. And the terrorists’ influence was felt as far away as the United States, where 55-year-old expatriate cleric Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman was arrested and went on trial for alleged complicity in the February bombing of Manhattan’s World Trade Center.

Intransigence in Iraq: Nearly two years after the end of the Persian Gulf War, Saddam Hussein’s government was still tempting fate last January. It launched a series of forays into the U.N.-patrolled demilitarized zone at the Kuwaiti border to retrieve materiel--including Chinese Silkworm missiles--that it claimed as its own. Plus, it refused to let aircraft carrying U.N. weapons inspection teams land in Baghdad. And so, at mid-month, the United States, Britain and France launched air strikes on Iraqi missile sites in the southern “no-fly” zone to force compliance with U.N. resolutions that ended the war. Then, in April, after a visit to Kuwait by former President George Bush, Kuwaiti authorities announced that he had been the target of an Iraqi-dispatched assassination team they had intercepted. The Clinton Administration was slow to take the accusation seriously, but in June the United States launched a cruise missile attack on Baghdad that hit and heavily damaged Iraq’s intelligence complex in the capital. Clinton said he ordered the attack based on “compelling evidence” that Hussein was behind the plot against Bush.

Discontent in Libya: Despite more than a year and a half of a U.N.-imposed arms embargo and other sanctions, Moammar Kadafi’s government continued to refuse to surrender two Libyan intelligence operatives suspected of responsibility for the 1988 downing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. But in late October, sources opposed to Kadafi said that discontent with the deteriorating quality of life in Libya had resulted in a series of uprisings within both the army and the nation’s security forces. Diplomatic sources agreed that earlier in the month, Kadafi had been forced to violently quell rebellions in three areas of central Libya.

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

Negotiated Revolution: Three days before Christmas, what once would have been unthinkable happened. South Africa’s last white-controlled Parliament adopted a sweeping new constitution that guarantees equal rights to blacks for the first time and officially ends the pernicious policies of apartheid. It was the penultimate step in a difficult march to democracy that will culminate in one-person, one-vote elections next April 27.

The Parliament vote capped a year that had a full measure of triumphs and tragedies for South Africa. Among the triumphs was the ratification in July of next year’s election date by black and white representatives who had engaged in two years of stormy negotiations. There was also those negotiators’ approval of the new constitution in November and the speech that African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela gave to the U.N. General Assembly in September, when he called on foes of apartheid around the world to lift almost all sanctions against Pretoria before economic disaster blocked progress toward democracy. President Clinton, for one, lifted most of the U.S. government’s remaining sanctions.

The tragedies included the assassination in April of the ANC’s Chris Hani, one of the nation’s most charismatic black leaders. Millions of South Africans protested Hani’s death with one of the largest general strikes in their country’s history. Then there was the continuing violence by rival factions in the black townships and, in July, the massacre by black gunmen of 10 white worshipers at a church in a middle-class suburb of Cape Town.

All the same, the year was best symbolized in mid-December when Mandela and President Frederik W. de Klerk stood side by side in Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize for their joint efforts to forever change their country.

Difficulties in Somalia: In March, U.S. special envoy Robert B. Oakley pronounced the international effort to aid Somalia, launched the previous December, a success. Operation Restore Hope, as the U.S.-led mission was dubbed, had, said Oakley, achieved its primary mission: to help feed millions of Somalis stricken by drought, famine and the tyranny of rival warlords. Within weeks, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to set up the largest U.N. peacekeeping force in history in the East African nation--28,000 troops authorized to do whatever was necessary to maintain peace, disarm the warring factions and protect relief workers.

It all seemed too good to be true. And it was. On June 5, 24 Pakistani peacekeepers were killed in an ambush widely believed to have been masterminded by warlord--or clan leader--Mohammed Farah Aidid. U.N. forces then launched a series of ground and air assaults raids on Aidid’s compound, radio station and arms caches, but they failed to flush him out, and in August, President Clinton dispatched 400 U.S. Army Rangers to join the hunt. Instead of finding Aidid, however, the Rangers lost 16 of their number in an Oct. 3 ambush that killed 18 American soldiers in all--prompting the President to change course and pledge to bring all U.S. combat forces home by March 31. In response, Aidid announced a unilateral cease-fire and released an Army pilot who had spent 11 days in captivity after the Oct. 3 firefight. But in mid-December, five days of peace talks among the warring factions collapsed, and there were strong indications that the United Nations may have to transform its mission into a minuscule, almost token operation after the United States withdraws.

Coup in Burundi: Fires. Scattered bodies. Rival tribesmen battling with machetes. Such were the images coming out of the mountainous Central African nation of Burundi after a military coup that began in late October when soldiers seized President Melchior Ndadaye and drove other government officials into hiding. Ndadaye had become the nation’s first democratically elected president only in June, and army-controlled state radio confirmed three days after his disappearance that he was killed during the coup, masterminded by former President Jean-Baptiste Bagaza and the army chief of staff. The rebels were ultimately unsuccessful, and former Foreign Minister Sylvestre Ntibantunganya was elected Speaker of Parliament on Dec. 22, thus becoming the country’s interim president. But Burundi remained tense as the year ended, and it was estimated that 100,000 people had died in the fighting.

Horror in Angola: In September, 1992, the formerly Marxist government of Jose Eduardo dos Santos handily won an election in Angola that the United Nations judged free and fair. Defeated was rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, whose forces had been backed by the United States since the mid-1970s. But Savimbi charged fraud and resumed his battle against the government with a vengeance. The result: More than a year after peace was supposed to be restored, Angola is racked by the deadliest, most destructive conflict in its history. U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali declared in September that 1,000 people were dying every day from battle wounds, famine and disease from the civil war. And while aid officials say that figure was probably too high, they agree that 50,000 to 100,000 people have perished in the past year and that one-third of Angola’s 11 million people are at risk. However, another round of peace talks is scheduled to begin tomorrow in Zambia.

EUROPE

Bloodshed in Bosnia: In April, 1992, Bosnian Serbs and mercenaries from Serbia itself--bent on annexing land for a “Greater Serbia”--lay siege to Sarajevo, the multiethnic capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Twenty-one months later, as 1993 drew to a close, the conflict they engendered had deteriorated into a savage, three-way civil war involving the Muslim-led Bosnian government, Serbs and Croats--and there was no end in sight. At the beginning of the year, Western mediators Lord Owen and Cyrus R. Vance crafted a plan for splitting Bosnia into 10 ethnic provinces. The constitutional principles of such a confederation were accepted by all three factions, but the proposal went down to defeat when the Serbs balked at withdrawing from much of the territory they had seized in eastern Bosnia. In September, a new partition agreement proposed by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Bosnian Croat chieftain Mate Boban gained favor with Owen and his new mediation partner, U.N. envoy Thorvald Stoltenberg, as a last-ditch measure for averting a humanitarian catastrophe in the coming winter. But the Bosnian government rejected that plan, which would have left the republic a landlocked rump comprising less than 30% of the original state, with the status of the besieged capital still in question.

In another effort to alleviate the misery, the United States flew its first airdrop mission over Bosnia in late February, parachuting relief supplies to besieged Muslim communities in the Serb-occupied east of the republic. And in April, U.S. and other Western fighter planes began patrolling a “no-fly” zone over Bosnia--but U.N. opposition to military strikes against the combatants prevented any action from being taken to thwart the 1,000-plus recorded violations over the rest of the year. Then, in late December, Britain and France threatened to pull out their considerable contingents from U.N. forces escorting aid--a move that would undermine already frustrated deliveries.

Prospects for a breakthrough appeared far gloomier with the start of 1994, with Greece taking its turn in the rotating European Community presidency. Greek Foreign Minister Karolos Papoulias has promised Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic that Athens will work to get U.N. sanctions lifted from its Serbian allies.

Extremism in Germany: In March, the extreme right-wing Republikaner party scored big gains in a bellwether local election--confirming that racial and religious understanding was under fire in Germany. Less than two months later, legislators passed a new asylum law to halt the costly influx of nearly half a million foreigners annually--barring asylum seekers who are not fleeing political persecution or war and effectively slamming shut the industrialized world’s last open door for economic refugees. Then, in the worst atrocity to befall foreign residents since World War II, five Turkish nationals were killed and three others were critically injured in an arson attack on their home in the western city of Solingen. The attack was a virtual copy of an incident the previous year in the northern city of Moelln, where a Turkish grandmother and two girls died when their home was set ablaze. However, two young neo-Nazis were convicted of the latter crime in December and given maximum sentences.

Agreement in the EC: In December, 1991, European Community leaders meeting in the Dutch city of Maastricht approved an agreement on West European economic and political union. And on Nov. 1 last year, exactly 11 months later than planned, the so-called Maastricht Treaty finally went into effect; obtaining the consent of all 12 member nations took that long. The pact cleared one hurdle in May, when Danish voters endorsed it in a second referendum vote. They had rejected it a year earlier, but EC leaders paved the way for the change of heart by promising Denmark the right to stay out of many of the treaty’s main provisions, including the single EC currency and common defense policies. Britain’s House of Commons gave its approval in July. And Germany’s highest court removed the final barrier in October, when it rejected a claim that Parliament’s ratification of the accord violated German law.

Hope in Northern Ireland: Britons were startled in November when a London newspaper revealed that representatives of Her Majesty’s government had begun meeting in February with members of the Irish Republican Army in an attempt to finally end decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. More than 3,100 people have been killed in the province, also known as Ulster--and another 200-plus have died in Britain--since “the troubles” began in 1968, mainly between Irish-nationalist Roman Catholics and pro-British Protestants, with the British army vainly trying to keep order. Then, in December, a potential breakthrough occurred: British Minister John Major and Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds jointly announced that they are prepared to bring the IRA to the peace table if the group ends its violence. In a seven-page declaration, the two countries said that Northern Ireland’s Protestant majority may stay in the United Kingdom as long as it wants but that Britain has no long-term strategic interest in the province and will not oppose union with Ireland if the majority wants that. Still, diplomats in London characterized the document as the “easy bit” and said that a long, grueling effort lies ahead to persuade extremists on both sides to abandon violence.

Italy: A continuing crackdown on organized crime was the good news in Italy. It led, among other places, to the arrest in January of Salvatore (Toto) Riina, the Mafia’s 62-year-old boss of bosses, on the lam since 1969 and held responsible for more than 50 slayings, including spectuacular assassinations of key anti-Mafia figures. But the other side of the coin was a mushrooming kickback scandal that implicated about 2,600 business leaders and politicians--or much of the nation’s postwar Establishment. Indeed, by April, voters were in such a throw-the-bums-out mood that they passed all eight items in a pivotal referendum. That included a change in the way three-quarters of the Italian Senate is elected, an end to public financing of political parties and the abolition of three ministries. Within three days, Prime Minister Giuliano Amato had tendered his government’s resignation, and, four days later, Preident Oscar Luigi Scalfaro asked the head of the Bank of Italy, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, to form the country’s 52nd postwar government.

Precedent in Turkey: Surprising even themselves, members of Turkey’s ruling party elected Tansu Ciller as their leader in June, and predictably, the following day, she became the nation’s first female prime minister. A rich, U.S.-educated professor of economics, the 47-year-old Ciller is viewed as one of a new generation of politicians who party stalwarts hope will be better able than their predecessors to harness the potential of their dynamic Muslim nation. She quickly confronted familiar problems: a gaping budget deficit, high inflation and a coalition government shy of unpopular decisions.

ASIA

Peace in Cambodia: Altogether, the United Nations spent $2.6 billion on its largest-ever peacekeeping mission, aimed at restoring democracy to Cambodia. And to worldwide sighs of relief, the effort succeeded. During six days in May, about 90% of registered voters turned out to select a new Constituent Assembly--in the first free, multi-party elections in more than 40 years. Except for minor incidents, the notorious Khmer Rouge failed to follow through on a promise to disrupt the vote, for which it refused to field candidates. Some of the Maoist rebels were even observed ferrying rural voters to polls and presenting valid registration cards and voting themselves. The most seats were won by the opposition royalist party loyal to Prince Norodom Sihanouk, and in September, Sihanouk signed into law a democratic constitution, took his place as king and appointed a government to lead the country to peace and reconciliation after more than two decades of civil war. That ended the formal U.N. mandate and also marked one of the great political comebacks of the 20th Century. Sihanouk, now 71, was first crowned king by French colonialists in 1941.

Second Chance in Pakistan: Benazir Bhutto, the first woman to lead a modern Muslim state, lost her job as prime minister of Pakistan in 1990 when her government was dismissed on charges of corruption and misrule. She was replaced by Nawaz Sharif. But last April, President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dissolved Parliament and fired Sharif, who had been trying for months to weaken the presidency. In July, Ishaq Khan resigned (as did Sharif, who had survived his sacking). And in October, Bhutto regained the premiership after her liberal Pakistan People’s Party won the most seats in nationwide elections. She still faces considerable opposition from Sharif’s conservative Pakistan Muslim League--although Sharif said he had no intention of trying to undermine her government.

Civilian Leader in South Korea: Kim Young Sam’s name and image were banned in South Korea’s mass media when he was a leader of the opposition. But in February, Kim became the nation’s first civilian president in 32 years. He pledged to root out corruption, revitalize the sagging economy and enhance “national discipline.” And he promptly launched a sweeping series of reforms that purged politicians, police, prosecutors, judges, military leaders and other bureaucrats suspected of amassing illicit fortunes under the military-led governments that ruled the country from 1961 to 1993.

New Era in Japan: Japan witnessed its biggest political upheaval in nearly four decades as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party--increasingly hemmed in by corruption scandals and seemingly incapable of reform--lost control of the government for the first time since 1955. Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa’s administration began to unravel in June, only weeks after Crown Prince Naruhito’s marriage to former diplomat Masako Owada had delighted the nation. The prime minister’s troubles began when he caved in to LDP bigwigs and agreed to drop efforts to negotiate political reforms with opposition parties. That led 44 lawmakers to defect from his party and, in elections in July, it lost its longtime majority in the lower house of Parliament. The result: Japan got its first coalition government since 1948, headed by 55-year-old Morihiro Hosokawa, the nation’s youngest prime minister since 1972. Hosokawa’s accession clouded Japan’s political outlook but also offered a stronger promise of political and electoral reform than at any time during the LDP’s reign. But as the year ended without any significant changes, that promise remained just a promise.

Disappointment in China: “A More Open China Awaits 2000 Olympics”--or so said countless billboards and banners in Beijing. They were all part of the nation’s campaign promoting its capital as the best site for the year 2000 Olympic Games. But they were all for naught. Meeting in Monte Carlo, the International Olympic Committee chose Sydney, Australia--which got 45 votes to Beijing’s 43. Human rights activists interpreted the vote as an endorsement of their campaign to dissuade the IOC from selecting Beijing only four years after the crackdown on demonstrators in Tian An Men Square. A month after the IOC vote, China incurred international displeasure with an underground nuclear test that President Clinton, for one, had specifically requested it to cancel--the explosion broke a yearlong global moratorium on nuclear testing. Thus China ended the year looking more fearsome than it had in the spring, when its representatives met in Singapore for two days of historic, though only semiofficial, talks with negotiators from its bitter rival, Taiwan. That had represented the highest-level contact between Beijing and Taipei since the Communist victory over the Nationalists in 1949.

Disaster in India: It was the subcontinent’s deadliest earthquake in many decades--perhaps in history. Before dawn on Sept. 30, a magnitude 6.4 temblor rocked south-central India, devastating more than two dozen villages. That necessitated the Indian army’s biggest-ever rescue effort, made more difficult not only by occasional monsoon rains but also by tens of thousands of onlookers who converged on the scenes of destruction. Reports of the dead ranged as high as 30,000, although the government said the confirmed toll was fewer than 10,000.

Mystery in North Korea: Pyongyang stunned both its edgy neighbors and Western powers in March when it abruptly declared that it was withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it joined in 1985. The surprise announcement seemed aimed at forestalling international inspection of facilites suspected--despite North Korean denials--of being used to develop a nuclear-weapons capability. Although the secretive Communist regime later “suspended” its withdrawal, it attracted even more global attention in November when the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. body, officially informed the U.N. General Assembly that North Korea had consistently refused to allow his inspectors to visit its nuclear sites. And there the situation stood as the year ended, with the Clinton Administration indicating that it will press for a U.N. oil embargo on North Korea if the dispute reaches an impasse.

LATIN AMERICA

Deepening Woe in Haiti: The Haitian people’s struggle with destitution and despair looked fierce last January, as the new Clinton Administration had the Coast Guard and Navy continue enforcing a blockade aimed at preventing boatloads of refugees from fleeing to the United States. And their lot looked equally hopeless in December, after a year of international pressure had failed to restore ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power. Aristide--the country’s first-ever democratically elected leader--was forced to flee by a September, 1991, military coup, and despite his apparent willingness in the spring to grant an amnesty to the coup leaders, they balked at allowing him to return. In June, an exasperated U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to impose tough sanctions on oil and arms deliveries to the nation and to impose a financial embargo intended to hit not only the military regime but also its backers among the Haitian elite. Within a month that tactic seemed to have been effective: A week of negotiating on Governors Island in New York Harbor produced an agreement between Aristide and military ruler Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras specifying that Aristide could resume office by Oct. 30. But that promise proved illusory. Indeed, when a shipload of U.S. and Canadian advisers arrived in the capital in mid-October, port officials refused to allow it to dock. As the year ended, the United States and the United Nations continued the blockade of nearly all oil products and other strategic goods but had withdrawn active diplomatic involvement in settlement efforts.

Big Chill in El Salvador: Although officially over, the 12-year civil war in El Salvador continued to cast a chill over events there. In March, a U.N.-appointed Commission on Truth issued a scathing report identifying prominent military and Establishment figures as perpetrators of assassinations, massacres and other atrocities during the war. To take one example: The report singled out Gen. Rene Emilio Ponce, who had just resigned as minister of defense, as the officer who ordered the murders of six Jesuit priests in 1989. But at the urging of President Alfredo Cristiani, the National Assembly, dominated by Cristiani’s right-wing party, passed a sweeping amnesty law that pardoned all such crimes, and the first men to be freed under the law were two army officers convicted in those murders. In July, Cristiani did complete a purge of the army, as required under the terms of the peace accords ending the war. But in late October, former rebel commander Francisco Velis was assassinated, and his murder raised fears among the left and among U.N. peacekeepers that death squads similar to those that terrorized El Salvador during the 1980s are once again operating--bent on eliminating opposition in advance of nationwide elections scheduled for March.

Closure in Colombia: After escaping from a luxury prison in July, 1992, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar had been on the run for 16 months. But security forces finally caught up with him in December in his hometown of Medellin, and he died in the resulting shootout. During the previous decade, Escobar had waged a ferocious war with the government in the course of building a cocaine empire that funneled billions of dollars’ worth of drugs into the United States and Europe. Tens of thousands of Colombians were killed in that conflict, including judges, journalists, leftist leaders and four presidential candidates.

Crisis Mode in Nicaragua: For nearly a week in August, a double-barreled hostage drama gripped Nicaragua--but it ended without bloodshed. At one point, two sets of kidnapers--rearmed Contra rebels in the north and retired Sandinista soldiers in the capital, Managua--held nearly 80 people captive, including several lawmakers and the vice president. But the two bands of gunmen released their hostages gradually until all were freed. Still, President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro emerged from the episode weaker than ever. She had to turn to former President Daniel Ortega and Roman Catholic Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo to negotiate with the hostage-takers, and both groups were allowed to escape unpunished. Also, she remained unable to count on aid from the United States. That was suspended earlier in the summer, after an explosion underneath an auto body shop on the outskirts of Managua revealed a huge cache of weapons, including antiaircraft missiles, stockpiled by Salvadoran guerrillas in violation of the peace accords that ended El Salvador’s civil war.

Power Grab in Guatemala: Two weeks of political chaos ensued after Guatemalan President Jorge Serrano suspended the restive Central American nation’s constitution in May and dissolved its Congress and Supreme Court. He declared that he was forced to seized absolute power because corrupt lawmakers and judges--some, he claimed, bought by drug money--were blackmailing him, demanding bribes to go along with his policies. But Serrano’s “self-coup” triggered economic sanctions from the United States and Europe along with widespread domestic opposition. A week later, he was ousted by the army and forced to flee the country. Next, his vice president, Gustavo Espino Salguero, tried to take over, but Congress refused to swear him in. Instead, a coalition of business, labor and political groups, with army support, united to steer Guatemala back to constitutional rule. To the surprise of many, human rights ombudsman Ramiro de Leon Carpio was selected president by Congress and installed June 6.

Mexico: Every six years, the political party that has ruled Mexico for more than six decades engages in a mysterious ritual to select its next presidential candidate. This time the Institutional Revolutionary Party named Luis Donaldo Colosio to be its new standard-bearer. Colosio, 43, is among the best-known politicians in Mexico because, as social development secretary under current President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, he oversees a popular anti-poverty program. His nomination virtually assures that he will be president after elections next Aug. 24.

NORTH AMERICA

Defeat in Canada: The Progressive Conservative Party governed Canada for nine years. It stood for hard-right economic conservatism, cuts in social spending, a new value-added tax and the North American Free Trade Agreement. When Prime Minister Brian Mulroney stepped down in June, it even gave the nation its first female prime minister--Kim Campbell, a sharp-tongued 46-year-old lawyer who had been defense minister under Mulroney. But the Tories’ austerity program also brought about a lingering recession, 11% unemployment and widespread public disillusionment about the future. And in October, voters delivered an astonishing rebuke to the party, which finished a humiliating fifth in national elections--the biggest single loss of seats in Canadian history. Replacing it was a majority Liberal Party government led by Jean Chretien, a 59-year-old French-speaking lawyer from Quebec. The vote also thrust into prominence the separatist Bloc Quebecois, giving Quebec nationalists more power at the federal level than ever.

INTERNATIONAL TRADE

Deal in Geneva: Seven years and three months of frequently acrimonious bargaining finally came to an end on Dec. 15 in Switzerland as 117 nations approved a monumental world trade agreement that will slash import taxes, or tariffs, around the globe by an average of 40%, open markets for food and consumer goods and extend protections to the growing business of international financial services. The accord--negotiated under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade--is one of the most far-reaching economic pacts ever and is scheduled to take effect at the beginning of next year. It will bring down the price of a wide range of products, from aircraft to yarn. For the Clinton Administration, the major disappointment of the talks was the failure to reach an agreement with the European Community to bring satellite television, movies and other elements of the audiovisual business into the pact; that shortcoming was viewed as a major failure by Hollywood.

Pact in North America: The proposed North American Free Trade Agreement would eliminate most tariffs, quotas and other barriers to unrestrained commerce among the United States, Mexico and Canada over a 15-year period beginning Jan. 1, and it moved several steps closer to reality last year. In August, simultaneous announcements in Washington, Mexico City and Ottawa confirmed that negotiators had completed important supplementary agreements to the accord. These side deals would establish fact-finding missions and provide for trade sanctions or fines if any of the three partners failed to enforce its labor or environmental laws. Then, in November, the U.S. Congress gave its approval to NAFTA after a rancorous national debate that widened into a consideration of the fundamental changes sweeping the U.S. economy. At year’s end, though, neither Canada nor Mexico had yet given a formal OK to the agreement.