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| 1998 |
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| In Angola, war raged between the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Although the UN had spent some $1.6 billion between 1994 and 1998 in peacekeeping funds, the terrible fighting continued, and the UN withdrew its forces. | 1 |
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| Feb. 13 |
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| Nigerian troops defeated the Sierra Leonese military government, previously led by rebel militant Lt. Col. Johnny Paul Koromah, and ousted him from power. This Nigerian intervention helped restore Pres. Kabbah to power after ten months of exile. However, Sierra Leone remained a problem for the UN and other international organizations, because the two main rebel forces continued fighting government forces in Sierra Leone's civil war. | 2 |
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| Feb. 23 |
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| Former ANC leaders P. W. Botha and F. W. de Klerk appeared before the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, created by Pres. Nelson Mandela, to be questioned concerning their roles in the old apartheid system. | 3 |
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| April 19 |
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| Leaders of the Western Hemisphere signed a joint declaration regarding the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), originally brokered in 1994. In addition to trade issues, human rights, education, and drug trafficking, the conference agreed to give greater agency to the Organization of American States (OAS) to monitor the progress of efforts to control the illegal drug trade and passed measures to strengthen Latin America's weak judicial systems. | 4 |
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| May 6 |
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| A brutal border war broke out between Ethiopia and Eritrea as conflicts over the 150-mile border area known as Badame carried over from struggles surrounding Eritrean independence in 1993. | 5 |
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| May 11–13 |
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| India caused international controversy by conducting five successful nuclear-weapons tests. Meanwhile, many of the world's other nuclear powers were engaged in negotiations to gradually disarm and to ban the testing of nuclear weapons. India faced reproach and sanctions from the UN and the United States. | 6 |
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| May 11 and July 13 |
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| The Organization of American States (OAS) was successful in intervening as an outside observer in elections in Paraguay and Ecuador, respectively. Argued as fraudulent by opposition parties within each country, both elections met OAS standards for fairness. | 7 |
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| May 28–30 |
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| Pakistan conducted atomic-weapons testing (See 1998, May 28–30). | 8 |
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| June 21 |
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| A temporary cease-fire was called in Burundi's five-year-old civil war (See 1998, June 21). The death toll by late 2000 rose to over 200,000. On Aug. 28, 2000, a short-lived peace accord was witnessed by former South African president Nelson Mandela and U.S. president Bill Clinton. | 9 |
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| Aug. 20 |
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| In response to the Aug. 7 bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the U.S. sent cruise missiles and destroyed a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Sudan that was allegedly producing chemical weapons. Simultaneously, the U.S. attacked military targets in Afghanistan. | 10 |
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| Sept. 4 |
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| A UN tribunal sentenced former prime minister of Rwanda Jean Kambanda to a life sentence for his role in the Rwandan genocidal killing of nearly half a million people between 1994 and 1999. | 11 |
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| Oct. 23 |
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| In a historic peace agreement, Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, Palestinian National Authority (PNA) president Yasir Arafat, King Hussein of Jordan, and U.S. president Bill Clinton convened to sign the Wye River Peace Accords. The agreement established a preliminary plan for the gradual transfer of the West Bank to Palestinian control and the freeing of some 750 Palestinian prisoners in the process. | 12 |
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