EVENTS
US SIDES WITH MALVAL IN HAITI DISPUTE The United States sided May 16 with Prime Minister Robert Malval in denouncing a new military-approved government in Haiti. Mr. Malval, breaking a six-month silence with a bold act of defiance, earlier called on Army chief Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras to resign immediately. The White House said in a statement that it ``vigorously'' supported Malval's denunciation of ``this travesty of constitutional process.'' In Port-au-Prince, Malval also called the new government illegal and demanded that civil servants refuse to obey its orders. He blasted the military's appointment of Emile Jonassaint as provisional president to replace the exiled Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Pakistan yields
The provincial government has agreed to extend Islamic laws to a tribal region in northwest Pakistan, following a violent protest that left 11 demonstrators dead. The governor of the North-West Frontier Province, Khurshid Ali Khan, late May 16 ordered the Islamic laws affecting the rest of Pakistan to apply to Malakand region as well. About 30,000 demonstrators blocked roads for five days around Malakand to demand the implementation of Islamic law. Malawians go to polls
Three decades after gaining independence from Britain, Malawians voted May 17 in their country's first democratic election, called by dictator Kamuzu Banda after bloody riots two years ago shook his iron grip on power. Mr. Banda was expected to lose the president's office he claimed for life in 1971. Russian deputy resigns
Sergei Shakhrai, one of Russia's leading young politicians, resigned May 17 as deputy prime minister a day after he was fired from another post, minister of nationalities and regional policy. Mr. Shakhrai said he had submitted his resignation to President Boris Yeltsin because he had not been consulted about the naming of a new minister for nationalities issues, news agencies said. Shakhrai had clashed with the administration over policy toward Chechnya, a region in the Caucasus Mountains that declared independence in 1991.
Kerrigan case sentencing
The man who clubbed Nancy Kerrigan in the knee and his getaway driver were sentenced to 1-1/2 years behind bars by a judge who said they violated the peaceful spirit of the Olympics. Shane Stant, who knocked Ms. Kerrigan out of the US figure skating championships, and his uncle, Derrick Smith, who drove the getaway car, pleaded guilty May 16 to conspiracy to commit assault. Shawn Eckardt, Tonya Harding's bodyguard, pleaded guilty to racketeering for helping conceive the plot to boost Harding's chances of making the 1994 Olympics. The three men agreed to plead guilty in exchange for 1-1/2-year terms.
