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1997 Madrid Summit
The 1997 Madrid summit was a NATO summit held in Madrid, Spain from 8–9 July 1997. It was the 15th NATO summit and the second in 1997, the previous one being held in Paris. The summit was notable for inviting three new members, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic to join the alliance. Participants The official meetings were led by NATO Secretary General Javier Solana. One notable absence from the summit was Boris Yeltsin, President of Russia, which was instead represented by lower level bureaucrats, In attendance Topics The topic of enlargement was the main focus of the summit. The result of the summit was that Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic were invited to join NATO. Fellow Visegrád Group member Slovakia was excluded from this invitation. Slovakia had held a referendum on NATO membership in May 1997, but turnout in the referendum failed to achieve the required 50% of eligible voters and government sabotage was blamed, which in turn was viewed as one of a stri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NATO Summit
A NATO summit is a summit meeting that is regarded as a periodic opportunity for heads of state and heads of government of NATO member countries to evaluate and provide strategic direction for Alliance activities. NATO summits are not regular meetings like the more frequent NATO ministerial meetings, but rather are important junctures in the alliance's decision-making process on the highest level. Summits are often used to introduce new policy, invite new members into the alliance, launch major new initiatives, and build partnerships with non-NATO countries. List of NATO summits From the founding of NATO in 1949, there have been a total of thirty-one NATO summits; the last of which was the Brussels summit held in June 2021. Only the traditional summits have received an official number, thereby excluding the exceptional summits of 2001 in NATO headquarters and of March 2022 in Brussels. See also * EU summit * G7 summit The Group of Seven (G7) is an inter-governme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lennart Meri
Lennart Georg Meri (; 29 March 1929 – 14 March 2006) was an Estonian politician, writer, and film director. He served as the second president of Estonia from 1992 to 2001. Meri was among the leaders of the movement to restore Estonian independence from the Soviet Union. Early life Meri was born in Tallinn, a son of the Estonian diplomat and later Shakespeare translator Georg Meri, and Estonian Swedish mother Alice-Brigitta Engmann. With his family, Lennart left Estonia at an early age and studied abroad, in nine different schools and in four different languages. His warmest memories were from his school years in Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris. In addition to his native Estonian, Lennart Meri fluently spoke five other languages: Finnish, French, German, English and Russian. Lennart Meri and his family were in Tallinn when Estonia became occupied by the Soviet Union armed forces in June 1940. The extended Meri family was split in the middle, half of whom opposed, the other ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Petru Lucinschi
Petru Lucinschi (; born 27 January 1940) is a former Moldovan politician who was Moldova's second President (1997–2001). Biography Early life and education Petru Lucinschi was born on 27 January 1940 in Rădulenii Vechi village, Soroca County, Kingdom of Romania (now Florești district) into the family of Kirill Vasilievich Lucinschi. Lucinschi carries a transcribed version of the Polish surname Łuczyński, but has never publicly identified with a Polish heritage. In 1962, he graduated from Chisinau State University. During his studies, he was the secretary of the local Komsomol. From 1963 to 1964, he was engaged in Komsomol work in the Soviet Army. He has a PhD in Philosophy (1977) from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Career in the Communist Party In 1964, he was admitted to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. From 1971, Lucinschi was a member of the Executive Committee (Politburo) of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Moldavian SS ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kiro Gligorov
Kiro Gligorov ( mk, Киро Глигоров, ; 3 May 1917 – 1 January 2012) was a Macedonian politician who served as the first President of the Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia) from 1991 to 1999. Early life He was born in Štip, then in the Bulgarian occupation zone of Serbia during World War I,''The European powers in the First World War: an encyclopedia'' Spencer Tucker, Laura Matysek Wood, Taylor & Francis, 1996, , p. 150. as Kiro Pančev. Gligorov later graduated from the 's |
Jean-Claude Juncker
Jean-Claude Juncker (; born 9 December 1954) is a Luxembourgish politician who served as the 21st Prime Minister of Luxembourg from 1995 to 2013 and 12th President of the European Commission from 2014 to 2019. He also served as Finance Minister from 1989 to 2009 and President of the Eurogroup from 2005 to 2013. By the time Juncker left office as Prime Minister in 2013, he was the longest-serving head of any national government in the EU and one of the longest-serving democratically elected leaders in the world, with his tenure encompassing the height of the European financial and sovereign debt crisis. In 2005, he became the first permanent President of the Eurogroup. In 2014, the European People's Party (EPP) had Juncker as its lead candidate, or ''Spitzenkandidat'', for the presidency of the Commission in the 2014 elections. This marked the first time that the ''Spitzenkandidat'' process was employed. Juncker is the first president to have campaigned as a candidate for t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Algirdas Brazauskas
Algirdas Mykolas Brazauskas (, 1932 – 2010) was the first President (fourth overall) of a newly re-independent post-Soviet Lithuania from 1993 to 1998 and Prime Minister from 2001 to 2006. He also served as head of the Communist Party of Lithuania that broke with Moscow. Biography Brazauskas was born in Rokiškis, Lithuania. He finished Kaišiadorys High School in 1952 and graduated from Kaunas Polytechnic Institute in 1956 with a degree in civil engineering. He later served as a Conscript sailor in the Soviet Navy, serving as a Fire controlman on board the Riga-class frigate ''Rosomacha'' until 1960. In 1967 Brazauskas started working in the Governmental Planning Committee, as a Committee's head's assistant. In 1974, Brazauskas received PhD in economics. Family He divorced his first wife, Julia, with whom he had two daughters; he married Kristina Butrimienė in 2002. Political career He took various positions in the government of Lithuanian SSR and Communist Par ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guntis Ulmanis
Guntis Ulmanis (born September 13, 1939), also known as Guntis Rumpītis from 1949 to 1989, is a Latvian politician and the fifth President of Latvia from 1993 to 1999. Biography Early life Guntis Ulmanis was born in Riga on September 13, 1939. His great uncle Kārlis Ulmanis was Latvian Prime Minister. In 1941 following the Soviet occupation, Guntis Ulmanis and his family were deported to Krasnoyarsk Krai, Siberia, Russian SFSR. In 1946, they returned to Latvia, but were not allowed to settle in Riga, so they stayed at Ēdole in the Kuldīga area of the Latvian SSR. In 1949, the remainder of the Ulmanis family was supposed to be deported in the upcoming March deportation, but Guntis Ulmanis was able to avoid that fate, as his mother remarried and his surname was changed to Rumpītis. They then moved to Jūrmala, where he attended school. After graduating, he entered the economic faculty of the Latvian State University. Career in Latvia After completing his studies in the u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Romano Prodi
Romano Antonio Prodi (; born 9 August 1939) is an Italian politician, economist, academic, senior civil servant, and business executive who served as the tenth president of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004. He served twice as Prime Minister of Italy, first from 18 May 1996 to 21 October 1998, and then from 17 May 2006 to 8 May 2008. Prodi is considered the founder of the Italian centre-left and one of the most prominent and iconic figures of the so-called Second Republic. He is often nicknamed ''Il Professore'' ("The Professor") due to his academic career. A former professor of economics and international advisor to Goldman Sachs, Prodi ran as lead candidate of The Olive Tree coalition, winning the 1996 Italian general election and serving as Prime Minister until 1998. Following the victory of his coalition The Union over the House of Freedoms led by Silvio Berlusconi in the 2006 Italian general election, Prodi took power again. On 24 January 2008, he lost a vo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Oddsson
David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the third king of the United Kingdom of Israel. In the Books of Samuel, he is described as a young shepherd and harpist who gains fame by slaying Goliath, a champion of the Philistines, in southern Canaan. David becomes a favourite of Saul, the first king of Israel; he also forges a notably close friendship with Jonathan, a son of Saul. However, under the paranoia that David is seeking to usurp the throne, Saul attempts to kill David, forcing the latter to go into hiding and effectively operate as a fugitive for several years. After Saul and Jonathan are both killed in battle against the Philistines, a 30-year-old David is anointed king over all of Israel and Judah. Following his rise to power, David ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gyula Horn
Gyula János Horn (5 July 1932 – 19 June 2013) was a Hungarian politician who served as Prime Minister of Hungary from 1994 to 1998. Horn is remembered as the last Communist Minister of Foreign Affairs who played a major role in the demolishing of the "Iron Curtain" for East Germans in 1989, contributing to the later unification of Germany, and for the Bokros package, the biggest fiscal austerity programme in post-communist Hungary, launched under his premiership, in 1995. Early life and education Horn was born in Budapest in 1932 as the third child of transport worker Géza Horn who was of Jewish background and factory worker Anna Csörnyei. He was brought up in a Lutheran household. They lived in conditions of poverty at the so-called "Barrack" estate between Nagyicce and Sashalom. There were seven brothers in the family: filmmaker Géza (1925–1956), Károly (1930–1946), Tibor (1935), Sándor (1939), Tamás (1942) and Dénes (1944). After the German occupation of Hu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Costas Simitis
Konstantinos G. Simitis ( el, Κωνσταντίνος Γ. Σημίτης; born 23 June 1936), usually referred to as Costas Simitis or Kostas Simitis (Κώστας Σημίτης), is a Greek politician who served as Prime Minister of Greece and was leader of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) from 1996 to 2004. Biography Costas Simitis was born in Piraeus to Georgios Simitis, a Professor at the School of Economic and Commercial Sciences, and to his wife Fani (née Christopoulou). He studied law at the University of Marburg in Germany and economics at the London School of Economics. He is married to Daphne Arkadiou (b. 1938), and has two daughters, Fiona and Marilena. He currently resides in the Kolonaki district of Athens. His brother Spiros Simitis is a prominent jurist specializing on data privacy in Germany. Political activity before 1981 In 1965 he returned to Greece and was one of the founders of the " Alexandros Papanastasiou" political research group. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helmut Kohl
Helmut Josef Michael Kohl (; 3 April 1930 – 16 June 2017) was a German politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998 and Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 1973 to 1998. Kohl's 16-year tenure is the longest of any German chancellor since Otto von Bismarck, and oversaw the end of the Cold War, the German reunification and the creation of the European Union (EU). Further, Kohl's 16 years and 30 day tenure is the longest for any democratically elected Chancellor of Germany. Born in 1930 in Ludwigshafen to a Catholic family, Kohl joined the CDU in 1946 at the age of 16. He earned a PhD in history at Heidelberg University in 1958, and worked as a business executive before becoming a full-time politician. He was elected as the youngest member of the Parliament of Rhineland-Palatinate in 1959 and from 1969 to 1976 was minister president of the Rhineland-Palatinate state. Viewed during the 1960s and the early 1970s as a progressive within the C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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