1993 - Afghanistan’s two main warring rivals met for their first talks in months and agreed on a peace formula that would allow the arch enemies to share power. President Burhanuddin Rabbani shook hands with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, chief of the hardline dissident Hezb-i-Islami party, at the Prime Minister’s House in Islamabad before sitting down to discuss a Pakistani-proposed peace formula. “The level of sincerity for the understanding reached gives assurance that whatever was decided will be implemented,” Rabbani’s spokesman Aziz Morad said. The fundamentalist leaders were brought together by Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to try to negotiate an end to months of bitter fighting in Kabul that has killed and injured thousands. Hekmatyar had previously refused to meet Rabbani in his capacity as president but only as leader of his Jamiat-i-Islami party, and the two had not met since last September. Under the draft accord, yet to be agreed by the other main Mujahideen parties, Rabbani remains president for several months while Hekmatyar becomes prime minister.
Other important events
1845 - Florida becomes the 27th state of the US.
1849 - The US Congress creates the Minnesota Territory.
1878 - Bulgaria gains independence after five centuries of Ottoman rule.
1896 - Peace of Bucharest between Serbia and Bulgaria is signed.
1941 - Bulgaria signs the Tripartite Pact and allows German troops to cross its territory.
1953 - World heavyweight boxing champion James Jeffries dies at 78.
1956 - Morocco gains independence from France.
1974 - A Turkish Airlines plane crashes after take-off from Orly Airport in Paris, killing 350.
1980 - Robert Mugabe wins a landslide victory in Rhodesia’s independence election.
1987 - Socialist Prime Minister Bettino Craxi resigns after 3 1/2 years in power.
1988 - Political clashes leave 11 people dead and more than 300 injured in Bangladesh.
1992 - Bosnia and Herzegovina declares its independence from Yugoslavia.
1995 - The former president of Mexico, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, goes on a hunger strike.
1996 - A bomb explodes aboard a bus in the heart of occupied Jerusalem, killing 19 people.
1997 - A passenger train derails in Pakistan’s Punjab province, killing at least 126 people and injuring more than 450.
1998 - Flash floods in Baluchistan, Pakistan kill more than 300 people.
2000 - Former dictator General Augusto Pinochet returns to Chile.
2002 - Swiss citizens vote in favour of becoming the 190th member of the UN.
2005 - An Interior Ministry helicopter with five people crashes into the sea near Jumeirah Palm Island, Dubai.
2005 - Steve Fossett makes a world record by completing the first non-stop, non-refuelled, solo flight around the world.
2007 - Pakistan successfully test-fires a short-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
2009 - Dozens of gunmen armed with rifles and rocket launchers attack the bus of the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan
2011 - Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmad Shafiq steps down.
