Maskhadov takes office as Chechen President
1997 - Chechnya’s first post-war president Aslan Maskhadov took office, pledging to realise the dream of independence for which his ancestors and contemporaries fought Russia. Maskhadov, a former Soviet artillery colonel who led separatist rebels against Russian troops sent to crush them in December 1994, also promised to strengthen the Muslim religion and fight a crime wave in the shattered region. “Now it’s the duty of each and every one of us to realise the expectations of our ancestors, our heros fallen in the holy war, of the right to live freely and independently,” Maskhadov said. “For hundreds of years our nation was not allowed to live freely ... Killed when they wanted to kill, burned when they felt like it ... deported when they felt like it,” he added.
February 12
1736 - Nadir Shah becomes King of Persia
1840 - The Housatonic Railroad opens in Connecticut, US.
1870 - Women in the Utah Territory gain the right to vote.
1885 - German East Africa Company is chartered.
1935 - The American airship USS Macon crashes and sinks in a storm off the coast of California.
1953 - Britain and Egypt agree to end Anglo-Egyptian rule in Sudan
1973 - First American prisoners of war from the Vietnam conflict released.
1986 - Britain and France sign treaty for building rail tunnel under the English channel.
1990 - At least 18 die in ethnic rioting in Dushanbe, capital of Soviet republic of Tajikistan.
1993 - Ousted Mali dictator Mousa Traore and three top aides are sentenced to death for ordering the killing of protesters.
1994 - Norwegian Edvard Munch’s painting ‘The Scream’ is stolen from a museum in Oslo.
1996 - Yasser Arafat is sworn in as the first elected Palestinian President.
1997 - Hwang Jang Yop, a confidant of North Korean leader Kim Jong II, defects in Beijing and seeks asylum in South Korea.
1998 - Sudan’s first vice-president and at least seven others are killed when their plane overshoots a runway and plunges into a river in southern Sudan.
1999 - The US Senate acquits William Jefferson Clinton of perjury and obstruction of justice.
2000 - Charles Schulz, creator of the immensely popular Peanuts comic strip, dies.
2002 - Iran Air Tours flight 956 crashes into a mountain in Iran killing 117 people.
2007 - The 14th session of the UAE’s Federal National Council, the first to include elected members, is inaugurated.
2008 - Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologises on behalf of the Australian government to indigenous people for past injustices.
2009 - Forty-nine people are killed after a Continental Connection aircraft crash-lands into a house in New York.
2016 - The DP World’s 330-metre berth at Nhava Sheva Gateway Terminal in Mumbai is inaugurated.
