Russia begins sending new troops to Tajikistan's border with Afghanistan.

Isma'il Khan escapes from Taliban captivity in Qandahar to Dr. Mohammed Ebrahim's stronghold in central Afghanistan.

Ebrahim, born in 1968 and called 'doctor" because he had completed a first-aid course with the NGOs during the 80's, is the brother of Mohammed Zaher, one of the first mujahideen in the province of Ghor where he led the resistance until his death in the beginning of the 1990's.

Ebrahim succeeded him and fights the Taliban militia, controlling parts of Taywara, Saghar, Toulak, Shahrak, Passawand, Porchaman, Doulina, Zirnay, Farsi, and Moshkan districts located in the province of Ghor, Farah, Herat and Helmand.

Taliban representatives meet for the first time with their primary opponents, the Northern Alliance, in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

The United States, the United Nations, and the Saudi Arabia-based Organization of Islamic Conference are the backers of the meeting.

The Taliban, which controls almost 90 percent of Afghan territory, is urged by those promoting the talks to consider widening the scope of its government to include its opponents in the ruling structure.

Fighting between the two forces continues in the Shomali plains north of Kabul.

Tajik officials and international humanitarian organizations fear a large influx of refugees into Tajikistan if the Taliban succeeded in overcoming the Northern Alliance, the fundamentalist regime's only remaining opponent.

In Bulgaria, former strongman Todor Zhivkov is in 1998 reinstated as a member of the Communist Party's successor organization, the Socialist Party.

A peaceful reintegration of the remaining Serbian-controlled territory in the eastern part of Croatia is completed in 1998 under UN supervision.

Al Hayat, an Arabic language daily newspaper based in Jiddah, claims Osama bin Laden has acquired nuclear weapons from Soviet Central Asian countries using a network of "influential friends".

Others sources are skeptical. (Source: UPI 10.7.98)

The rightist Glafcos Clerides is reelected in Cypru in 1998.

At first Clerides shows no willingness to deal with the Turkish-Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, but the two eventually meet in New York under UN auspices.

In the late 1990s, the government of the Republic of Cyprus (composed solely of Greek Cypriots) continues to apply for membership to the European Union, though Turkey and its supporters block its admittance.

US emissary Richard Holbrooke publicly poses for pictures with leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (originally listed by the State Department as terrorists), effectively promoting the KLA to the post of Albanian leadership in Kosovo.

The militant Kosovar delegation to the Rambouillet talks, led by twenty-nine year old guerilla leader Hashim “the Snake” Thaçi, replaces Ibrahim Rugova and the older, more pacific generation of Kosovar leaders.

According to the Sunday Times of London, bin Laden is dispatching Islamic mercenaries to Kashmir to support an Islamic secession campaign.

(Source:Sunday Times 9.27.98)