Mori Yoshiro

born July 14, 1937, Neagari, Ishikawa prefecture, Japan

Japanese politician who was prime minister in 2000–01 during a period of economic downturn.

Both Mori's father and grandfather had been mayor of Neagari. He received a degree in commerce from Waseda University, Tokyo, in 1959. He became secretary to a member of the Diet (parliament) in 1962, and in 1969 he was elected as an independent to the House of Representatives, after which he joined the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP). He held a number of powerful positions in the government and the party. In 1983–84 he served as minister of education and in 1992–93 minister of international trade and industry, and in 1995 he was appointed minister of construction. In 1993 he became secretary-general of the LDP, and he was reappointed in 1998. Although he was connected with the stock scandal of 1989 that brought down the government of Prime Minister Takeshita Noboru, he himself was not prosecuted.

After his long-time associate Obuchi Keizo was incapacitated by a stroke on April 2, 2000, he was elected president of the LDP and on April 5 became prime minister. Plagued by cabinet scandals, an inability to reverse the country's economic recession, and a habit of making blunt, insensitive comments, he proved to be highly unpopular. The LDP suffered losses in June elections for the House and was forced into a coalition government. Amid growing calls for change, he announced on April 6, 2001, that he would step down upon the election of a new LDP president later in the month.

Moro, Aldo

born Sept. 23, 1916, Maglie, Italy

died May 9, 1978, near or in Rome

law professor, Italian statesman, and leader of the Christian Democrat Party, who served five times as premier of Italy (1963–64, 1964–66, 1966–68, 1974–76, and 1976). In 1978 he was kidnapped and subsequently murdered by left-wing terrorists.

A professor of law at the University of Bari, Moro published several books on legal subjects and served also as president of the Federazione Universitaria Cattolica Italiana (Federation of Italian University Catholics, 1939–42) and the Movimento Laureati Cattolici (Movement of Catholic Graduates, 1945–46). After World War II, he was elected deputy to the Constituent Assembly and to the legislature. He held a succession of cabinet posts, including under secretary of foreign affairs (December 1947–May 1948), minister of justice (1955–57), and minister of public instruction (1957–59).

Moro took office as secretary of the Christian Democrats during a crisis that threatened to split the party (March 1959). Although he was the leader of the Dorothean, or centrist, group of the Christian Democrats, he favoured forming a coalition with the Socialists and helped bring about the resignation of the conservative Christian Democrat prime minister Fernando Tambroni (July 1960).

When he was invited to form his own government in December 1963, Moro assembled a cabinet that included some Socialists, who were participating in the government for the first time in 16 years. He resigned after a defeat on a budget issue (June 26, 1964) but formed a new cabinet much like the old one (July 22). After Amintore Fanfani's resignation in 1965, Moro temporarily became his own foreign minister, renewing Italian pledges to NATO and the United Nations.

Italy's inflation and failing industrial growth prevented Moro from initiating many of the reforms he had envisaged, and this angered the Socialists, who effected his defeat in January 1966. He succeeded, however, in forming a new government on February 23. After the general elections in 1968, Moro, as is customary, resigned (June 5, 1968). He was foreign minister during 1970–72. In November 1974 he became premier with a coalition government, the second party being the Republican, but this government fell on Jan. 7, 1976. Moro was again premier in 1976, from February 12 to April 30, remaining in office as head of a caretaker government until July 9.

In October 1976 he became president of the Christian Democrats and remained a powerful influence in Italian politics even though he held no public office. On March 16, 1978, Moro was kidnapped in Rome by Red Brigades terrorists while on his way to attend a special session of Parliament. After government officials repeatedly refused to release 13 members of the Red Brigades on trial in Turin, Moro was murdered in or near Rome by the terrorist kidnappers.

Mosaddeq, Mohammad

born 1880, Tehrān, Iran

died March 5, 1967, Tehrān

Mosaddeq also spelled Masaddiq , or Mossadegh Iranian political leader who nationalized the huge British oil holdings in Iran and, as premier in 1951–53, almost succeeded in deposing the shah.

The son of an Iranian public official, Mosaddeq grew up as a member of Iran's ruling elite. He received a Doctor of Law degree from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and then returned to Iran in 1914 and was appointed governor-general of the important Fārs province. He remained in the government following the rise to power of Reza Khan in 1921 and served as minister of finance and then briefly as minister of foreign affairs. Mosaddeq was elected to the Majles (parliament) in 1923. When Reza Khan was elected shah (as Reza Shah Pahlavi) in 1925, however, Mosaddeq opposed the move and was compelled to retire to private life.

Mosaddeq reentered public service in 1944, following Reza Shah's forced abdication in 1941, and was elected again to the Majles. An outspoken advocate of nationalism, he soon played a leading part in successfully opposing the grant to the Soviet Union of an oil concession for northern Iran similar to an existing British concession in southern Iran. He built considerable political strength, based largely on his call to nationalize the concession and installations in Iran of the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (see British Petroleum Company PLC). In March 1951 the Majles passed his oil-nationalization act, and his power had grown so great that the shah, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, was virtually forced to appoint him premier.

The nationalization resulted in a deepening crisis in Iran, both politically and economically. Mosaddeq and his National Front Party continued to gain power but alienated many supporters, particularly among the ruling elite and in the Western nations. The British soon withdrew completely from the Iranian oil market, and economic problems increased when Mosaddeq could not readily find alternate oil markets.

A continuing struggle for control of the Iranian government developed between Mosaddeq and the shah. In August 1953, when the shah attempted to dismiss the premier, mobs of Mosaddeq followers took to the streets and forced the shah to leave the country. Within a few days, however, Mosaddeq's opponents, with U.S. support, overthrew his regime and restored the shah to power. Mosaddeq was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for treason and, after he had served his sentence, was kept under house arrest for the rest of his life. The Iranian oil-production facilities remained under the control of the Iranian government.

Mosaddeq's personal behaviour—which included wearing pajamas for numerous public appearances; speeches to the Majles from his bed, which was taken into the chambers; and frequent bouts of public weeping—helped focus world attention upon him during his premiership. Supporters claim the behaviour was a result of illness; detractors say he had a shrewd sense of public relations.

Moscoso, Mireya

born July 1, 1946, Pedasi, Panama

in full Mireya Elisa Moscoso de Gruber Panamanian politician, who was Panama's first woman president (1999–2004).

Moscoso was born to a poor family in a rural town. After graduating from high school, she worked as a secretary and in the early 1960s met Arnulfo Arias, a former president of Panama. She began working on his political campaigns, and on October 1, 1968, he was reelected. When he was deposed nine days later by General Omar Torrijos, Moscoso joined Arias in exile in Miami, Florida. There she studied interior design, and in 1969 the two were married. After Arias's death in 1988, she returned to Panama and in the early 1990s held several minor governmental posts. In 1990 Moscoso helped create the Arnulfista Party, of which she became president the following year. In 1994 she made her first run for the presidency, placing second with 29 percent of the vote.

Moscoso ran again for president in 1999. Her main opponent was Martín Torrijos, the son of former dictator Omar Torrijos and the candidate of the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party. The platforms of the two principal candidates did not differ in most respects. Overall, she was seen as the more populist candidate, Torrijos as more sympathetic to the concerns of business. Both vowed to reduce poverty, improve education, and create jobs. Moscoso also emphasized her intention to slow the government's policy of privatization. On May 2, 1999, Moscoso defeated Torrijos, winning 45 percent of the vote to Torrijos's 38 percent.

In December 1999 Moscoso oversaw the U.S. handover of the Panama Canal. Although she either fired or forced the resignation of every major officeholder appointed by the previous administration, the Panama Canal Authority remained autonomous and fulfilled its mission to run the canal in an orderly manner. During her administration Moscoso faced frequent charges of nepotism in government appointments. Constitutionally barred from running for a second term, she left office in 2004.

Mubārak, Hosnī

born May 4, 1928, Al-Minūfīyah governorate, Egypt

in full Muḥammad Hosnī Said Mubārak , Hosnī also spelled Husnī president of Egypt from October 1981.

Born in the Nile River delta, Mubārak graduated from the Egyptian military academy at Cairo (1949) and the air academy at Bilbays (1950), receiving advanced flight and bomber training in the Soviet Union. He held command positions in the Egyptian air force and from 1966 to 1969 was director of the air academy. In 1972 President Anwar el-Sādāt appointed Mubārak chief commander of the air force, and in this capacity he was credited with the successful performance of the Egyptian air force in the opening days of the war with Israel in October 1973. He was promoted to the rank of air marshal in 1974. In April 1975 Sādāt named him vice president, and in subsequent years Mubārak was active in most of the negotiations involving Middle Eastern and Arab policy. He served as the chief mediator in the dispute between Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania over the future of Western (Spanish) Sahara.

Mubārak became president following Sādāt's assassination on October 6, 1981, the anniversary of the start of the 1973 Egyptian-Israeli war. His years in office were marked by an improvement in Egypt's relations with the other Arab countries and by a cooling of relations with Israel, especially following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. He reaffirmed Egypt's peace treaty with Israel (1979) under the Camp David Accords, however, and cultivated good relations with the United States, which remained Egypt's principal aid donor. In 1987 Mubārak was elected to a second six-year term as president. During the Persian Gulf crisis and war following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990–91, Mubārak led other Arab states in supporting the Saudi decision to invite the aid of a U.S.-led military coalition to recover Kuwait. He also played an important role in mediating the bilateral agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization that was signed in 1993.

Reelected president in 1993, Mubārak faced a rise in guerrilla violence and growing unrest among opposition parties, which pressed for democratic electoral reforms (the last free elections in Egypt had been held in 1950). He launched a campaign against Islamic fundamentalists, especially the Islamic Group, which was responsible for a 1997 attack at Luxor that left some 60 foreign tourists dead. In 1995 he escaped an assassination attempt in Ethiopia and in 1999 was slightly wounded after being attacked by a knife-wielding assailant. Throughout, Mubārak continued to press for peace in the Middle East. Running unopposed, he was reelected to a fourth term as president in 1999. In 2005 Mubārak easily won Egypt's first multicandidate presidential election, which was marred by low voter turnout and allegations of irregularities.

Mugabe, Robert

born Feb. 21, 1924, Kutama, Southern Rhodesia [now Zimbabwe]

in full Robert Gabriel Mugabe the first prime minister (1980–87) of the reconstituted state of Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia. A black nationalist of Marxist persuasion, he eventually established one-party rule in his country, becoming executive president of Zimbabwe in 1987.

The son of a village carpenter, Mugabe was trained as a teacher in a Roman Catholic mission school. He was introduced to nationalist politics while he was a student at the University College of Fort Hare, South Africa, and between 1956 and 1960 he taught in Ghana.

Mugabe returned to Rhodesia in 1960, and in 1963 he helped the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole to form the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) as a breakaway from Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU). In 1964 he was arrested for “subversive speech” and spent the next 10 years in prison. During that period he acquired law degrees by correspondence courses. While still in prison he led a coup in 1974 deposing Sithole as ZANU's leader.

In 1975 Mugabe was freed, and during the civil war that pitted Rhodesia's black majority population against Prime Minister Ian Smith's white-ruled Rhodesian government (1975–79), Mugabe was joint leader, with Nkomo, of the Patriotic Front of Zimbabwe. The party's guerrillas operated against the Rhodesian government from bases in neighbouring Zambia, Mozambique, and Angola. Fresh negotiations in London in 1979 ended the war and led to new British-supervised parliamentary elections in February 1980. Mugabe's party won a landslide victory over the other black parties, and he became prime minister.

As prime minister, Mugabe initially followed a pragmatic course designed to reassure Zimbabwe's remaining white farmers and businessmen, whose skills were vital to the economy. He formed a coalition government between his party, ZANU (which drew its support from the majority Shona people), and Nkomo's ZAPU (which drew its support from the minority Ndebele people), and he abided by the new constitution's guarantees of substantial parliamentary representation for whites. At the same time, Mugabe took steps to improve the lot of black Zimbabweans through increased wages, improved social services, and food subsidies. In 1982 Mugabe ousted Nkomo from the coalition cabinet, and ethnic strife between the Shona and the Ndebele subsequently troubled the country. Zimbabwe's economy steadily declined despite Mugabe's measures, and whites continued to emigrate in substantial numbers.

Mugabe had always intended to convert Zimbabwe from a parliamentary democracy into a one-party socialist state. In 1984 his party, now called the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, or ZANU-PF, held a congress, made Mugabe its unchallenged leader, and set up a new party structure with a Central Committee and a Politburo that were designed to rule both the party and Zimbabwe. In 1987 Mugabe's and Nkomo's parties merged into one under the name of ZANU-PF, and as first secretary of the new party, Mugabe retained absolute control over it. On December 31, 1987, he became Zimbabwe's first executive president, effectively establishing one-party rule. In 1990 he was reelected president in a multiparty election that was marked by intimidation and violence.

Mugabe faced growing unrest in the late 1990s. A failing economy and his decision to send troops to assist President Laurent Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in his fight against rebels led to strikes, and in November 1998 riots occurred following Mugabe's announcement that he and members of his cabinet would receive pay increases. Factions within ZANU-PF continued to press for a true multiparty system. The first real opposition to Mugabe's government came from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), formed in September 1999 and led by trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai. In the parliamentary elections of 2000, the MDC won about half of the contested seats, but ZANU-PF won or controlled most of the remaining seats and thus maintained firm control of Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, war veterans, demanding immediate land reforms, threatened to occupy some of the country's white-owned farms. Mugabe showed sympathy for their cause, doing nothing to dissuade them. In the months leading to the 2000 parliamentary elections, the veterans acted on their threats, which led to heightened tensions in the country.

Although Mugabe was reelected in 2002, the elections were tainted by violence and criticized by observers. A law passed later that year allowed Mugabe to pursue an aggressive program of confiscating white-owned farms; more than half of the country's white farmers were forced to relinquish their property. Unfortunately, property was often claimed by politically connected individuals with little or no farming experience. The government's lack of forethought in forcing out the white farmers and failing to replace them with experienced farmworkers contributed to a significant decline in agricultural productivity; this, as well as a drought, led to severe food shortages in Zimbabwe.

As Mugabe's popularity further declined, his regime became increasingly brutal and repressive. Media freedom was curtailed, the opposition was harassed, and a controversial program that caused the demolition of illegal housing structures was implemented, rendering hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans homeless.

Mulroney, Brian

born March 20, 1939, Baie-Comeau, Que., Can.

in full Martin Brian Mulroney Canadian politician, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (1983–93), and prime minister of Canada from 1984 to 1993.

Born the son of an electrician in a paper-and-pulp town northeast of Quebec city, Mulroney grew up bilingual in English and French and received a B.A. (1959) from Saint Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, N.S., and a law degree (1962) from Laval University, Quebec city. In 1965 he began practicing law in Montreal, becoming a labour specialist. In 1974 he gained local celebrity as a member of the royal Cliche Commission investigating crime in Quebec's construction industry. Always active in politics, he made a bid in 1976 for the leadership of the Progressive Conservatives but lost to Joe Clark. In 1977 he was chosen president of the Iron Ore Co. of Canada.

When Mulroney won election as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party at its convention in June 1983, he had never run for or been elected to public office, but he offered the public a new face from French-speaking Quebec, where the Tories had traditionally been weak. He became prime minister in 1984 in a landslide victory of the Progressive Conservatives over the Liberals and was reelected in 1988.

As prime minister Mulroney sought closer cooperation with the United States on such bilateral issues as trade policies and measures to deal with acid rain in North America. During the early years of his administration Canada's economic growth was strong, job creation was high, and inflation was kept under control. His government pursued deregulation of key industries and reform of the tax structure, though a steep federal tax on goods and services introduced in 1991 was widely unpopular.

Mulroney's political success was in part forged by his creation of a coalition of Quebec nationalists and western conservatives, and his terms were marked by his continuing efforts to unify the country while recognizing Quebec's status as a “distinct society.” In 1987 he negotiated the Meech Lake accord on constitutional revision, but he was unable to obtain ratification from all 10 provinces before the deadline expired in 1990. A second attempt resulted in the Charlottetown accord of 1992; these were accepted by all the provincial premiers but were defeated in a popular referendum later that year. Early in 1993 Mulroney announced his retirement from politics; he was succeeded as party leader and prime minister by Kim Campbell that June.

Murayama Tomiichi

born March 23, 1924, Ōita, Japan

politician who in 1994–96 was the first Socialist prime minister of Japan since 1948.

One of 11 children born to a fisherman, Murayama graduated from Meiji University in Tokyo in 1946 and then returned to Ōita, where he became an activist in the local fishermen's union. Most of his subsequent political career was spent in relative obscurity. He won election to the Ōita city assembly in 1955 and moved up to a seat in the Ōita prefectural assembly in 1963. He was elected to the lower house of the Diet (parliament) in 1972 as a member of the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) and was successively reelected thereafter. Murayama first gained national recognition when, as a compromise candidate, he became the leader of the Social Democratic Party of Japan (SDJP; the party's new official name in English from 1991) in 1993.

The SDJP was a member of a seven-party coalition that came to power in 1993 and ended almost three decades of uninterrupted rule by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). In April 1994, however, Murayama abruptly withdrew his party's support from Hata Tsutomu, the second prime minister elected by the coalition. When Hata resigned two months later, Murayama succeeded him as prime minister on June 29 on the strength of an unprecedented alliance between the SDJP and the LDP. Murayama helped hold the fragile new coalition together, but he never had a firm grasp on power. On Jan. 5, 1996, he resigned and was succeeded six days later by Hashimoto Ryūtarō of the LDP.

Museveni, Yoweri Kaguta

born 1944, Mbarra district, Uganda

politician who became president of Uganda in 1986.

Museveni was born to cattle farmers and attended missionary schools. While studying political science and economics at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (B.A., 1970), he became chairman of a leftist student group allied with African liberation movements. When Idi Amin came to power in Uganda in 1971, Museveni returned to Tanzania in exile. There he founded the Front for National Salvation, which helped overthrow Amin in 1979. Museveni held posts in transitional governments and in 1980 ran for president of Uganda. When the elections, widely believed to have been rigged, were won by Milton Obote, Museveni formed the National Resistance Movement. The resistance eventually prevailed, and on January 26, 1986, Museveni declared himself president of Uganda. He was elected to the post on May 9, 1996, and his backers won control of the National Assembly in legislative elections held the following month.

As president, Museveni helped revitalize the country, providing political stability, a growing economy, and an improved infrastructure. He instituted a number of capitalist reforms, and, though he rejected multiparty democracy, arguing that it would degenerate into tribal politics in a poor African country, Museveni supported a free press. He also implemented measures to combat AIDS. Uganda, in fact, is one of the few African countries to have had success battling the illness.

In his foreign policy, Museveni often generated controversy by supporting rebels in other African countries. He backed Laurent Kabila, who deposed Mobutu Sese Seko in neighbouring Zaire in 1997, the Tutsi exiles who were fighting against the government of Rwanda, and a group, headed by one of his former schoolmates, battling the Islamic fundamentalist rulers of The Sudan. Museveni justified his support of rebels by stating that his goal was to achieve regional integration in both politics and economics and that the downfall of corrupt regimes was necessary to bring about such a union.

Naguib, Muḥammad

born Feb. 20, 1901, Khartoum, The Sudan

died Aug. 28, 1984, Cairo, Egypt

also spelled Moḥammed Neguib Egyptian army officer and statesman who played a prominent role in the revolutionary overthrow of King Farouk I in 1952.

A professional soldier, Naguib distinguished himself during the Egyptian defeat at the hands of Israel (1948) and won the respect of the Free Officers, a nationalist military group led by Gamal Abdel Nasser. In 1952 the Free Officers helped Naguib win election as president of the officers club in opposition to a man backed by King Farouk. The Free Officers engineered a coup that overthrew Farouk that July, and they saw Naguib as the man to represent their new regime to the public. Thus in 1953 he became president of the newly formed republic, although he had a more conservative political outlook than did Nasser and many of the other Free Officers. Naguib wanted to see a speedy return to constitutional government and objected to the summary sentences that were passed on various politicians by the Revolutionary Tribunal. In February 1954 he resigned the presidency, but demands by civilian and military groups impelled him to resume the office. Nasser, however, steadily consolidated his own position and became prime minister. He shrewdly acceded to some of Naguib's wishes by allowing the revival of political parties and calling for a constituent assembly to draft a constitution. An assassination attempt was made on Nasser in 1954 in which Naguib was vaguely implicated. Naguib was placed under house arrest, which was eased in 1960 and ended about 1970, and he ceased to play any role in Egyptian politics.

Nagy, Imre

born June 7, 1896, Kaposvár, Hung., Austria-Hungary

died June 16, 1958, Budapest, Hung.

Hungarian statesman, independent Communist, and premier of the 1956 revolutionary government whose attempt to establish Hungary's independence from the Soviet Union cost him his life.

Born to a peasant family, Nagy was apprenticed as a locksmith before being drafted in World War I. Captured by the Russians, he joined the Communists and fought in the Red Army. In 1929 he went to live in Moscow, where, as a member of the Institute for Agrarian Sciences, he remained until late 1944. He returned again to Hungary under Soviet occupation and helped establish the postwar government, holding several ministerial posts between 1944 and 1948. Because of his steadfast support of the peasants' welfare, Nagy was excluded from the Communist government in 1949 but was readmitted after making a public recantation. He became premier (1953–55) and then again was forced out because of his independent attitude, whereupon he took up a teaching post.

During the October 1956 revolution, the anti-Soviet elements turned to Nagy for leadership, and he became once more premier of Hungary. On the last day of the unsuccessful uprising, he appealed to the West for help against the invading Soviet troops. Treacherously deported to Romania after leaving his sanctuary in the Yugoslav embassy, he was returned to Hungary, tried, and put to death. Nagy was posthumously rehabilitated by Hungary's Supreme Court in 1989.

Najibullah, Mohammad

born 1947, Gardīz, Afghanistan

died September 27, 1996, Kabul

Afghan military official who was president of Afghanistan from 1986 to 1992.

The son of a prominent Pashtun family, Najibullah began studying medicine at Kabul University in 1964 and received his degree in 1975, but he never practiced medicine. He joined the Banner (“Parcham”) faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) in 1965, and he was twice imprisoned for political activities. In 1978 the PDPA staged a successful coup, but the People's (“Khalq”) faction soon gained supremacy over the Banner faction. Najibullah was named ambassador to Iran in 1978 but was fired within months after being accused of plotting to overthrow the regime of Hafizullah Amin. Najibullah went into exile in eastern Europe until the U.S.S.R. intervened in 1979 and supported a Parcham-dominated government. Najibullah was made head of the secret police and became known for his brutality and ruthlessness. His methods proved invaluable to the regime in view of escalating guerrilla warfare of the Muslim mujahideen, but as the war grew in intensity, the Soviet Union withdrew. Najibullah, who replaced Babrak Karmal as president in 1986, attempted to gain support by relaxing Karmal's strict control, but he was widely despised and was finally forced from office by the mujahideen rebels and mutinous groups within his own military in 1992. He took refuge in a United Nations compound, where he was sheltered for the next four years. Factional fighting continued, and when the Taliban militia took over the capital, Kabul, in 1996, they summarily executed Najibullah.

Narayanan, Kocheril Raman

born October 27, 1920, Uzhavoor, India

died November 9, 2005, New Delhi

Indian politician and diplomat, who was the president of India from 1997 to 2002. He was the first member of the country's lowest social caste, the group traditionally considered to be untouchable, to occupy the office.

Despite his family's poverty and social status, Narayanan's intellect won him a government-sponsored scholarship. After graduating from the University of Travancore (now the University of Kerala), he worked as a journalist for the Hindu (1944–45) and the Times of India (1945). He soon won another scholarship and left India to attend the London School of Economics, where he received top academic honours. While in England Narayanan also served as a foreign correspondent for Social Welfare Weekly.

Narayanan returned to India in 1948 and soon after entered the foreign service, despite opposition from upper-caste officials. During a long and distinguished career as a diplomat (1949–83), he held posts in numerous countries but was especially effective while serving in China (1976–78), where he helped mend relations following a 15-year rift. He was also ambassador to the United States (1980–83) at a time of strained relations between the two countries. In 1979 Narayanan was named vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University. An intellectual and a scholar, Narayanan was the author or coauthor of several works on Indian politics and international relations, notably India and America: Essays in Understanding (1984) and Non-Alignment in Contemporary International Relations (1981).

In 1984 Narayanan became active in politics. He served in parliament as a cabinet minister and in 1992 was named vice president, a post he held for five years. In 1997 he was elected president of India, winning 95 percent of the votes of mainly upper-caste lawmakers. Once in office, Narayanan expanded the role of the presidency, which had been largely ceremonial. He also sought to end violence and corruption and improve international relations. He left office in 2002, succeeded by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

Nash, Sir Walter

born Feb. 12, 1882, Worcestershire, Eng.

died June 4, 1968, Auckland, N.Z.

New Zealand statesman who was prime minister in 1957–60 and who earlier, as finance minister during the Great Depression and through World War II, guided the Labour Party's economic recovery program and then directed the government's wartime controls.

While continuing his self-education, Nash worked as a costing clerk around Birmingham and became a wholesale confectionery merchant in 1907. He emigrated to New Zealand in 1909, soon joining the Labour Party, and from 1919 to 1960 he was a member of the party's executive. He entered Parliament in 1929 and became the first Labour minister of finance in 1935. In 1938 he was named to head the newly formed social security program, which provided guaranteed medical care and improved pensions.

Nash was deputy prime minister from 1940 to 1949. During World War II he introduced a program to control prices, wages, and costs; raise taxes; impose rationing; and increase family welfare benefits—a program under which New Zealanders experienced a smaller decline in their standard of living than did the peoples of other Allied nations. From 1942 to 1944 Nash also served as New Zealand's minister to the United States and as a member of the Pacific War Council. He was a delegate to the United Nations financial conference at Bretton Woods, N.H. (1944).

After leading the Labour Party opposition in Parliament during 1950–57, Nash served as prime minister and minister of external affairs and Maori affairs (1957–60). He headed the Labour opposition again from 1960 to 1963. In foreign policy, he opposed the United States' involvement in Vietnam and favoured the seating of the People's Republic of China in the United Nations. Nevertheless, he supported New Zealand's defense treaties with the United States. He was knighted in 1965.

Nasser, Gamal Abdel

Introduction

born January 15, 1918, Alexandria, Egypt

died September 28, 1970, Cairo

Arabic Jamāl ʿAbd al-Nāṣīr army officer, prime minister (1954–56), and then president (1956–70) of Egypt, who became a controversial leader of the Arab world, creating the short-lived United Arab Republic (1958–61), twice fighting wars with Israel (1956, 1967), and engaging in such inter-Arab policies as mediating the Jordanian civil war (1970).

Early life

Nasser was born in a mud-brick house on an unpaved street in the Bacos section of Alexandria, where his father was in charge of the local post office. In an effort to cultivate a more earthy image of the president as a member of the class of rural agrarians (fellahin), Egyptian government publications for years gave his birthplace as Banī Murr, the primitive Upper Egypt village of his ancestors. From Alexandria, Nasser's father was transferred to Al-Khaṭāṭibah, a squalid delta village, where the boy got his first schooling. Then he went to live in Cairo with an uncle who had just been released from a British prison and had rooms in a building occupied by nine Jewish families.

Constantly in trouble with schoolteachers, some of them British, Nasser took part in many anti-British street demonstrations. In one he received a blow on the forehead that left a lifelong scar. After secondary school he went to a law college for several months and then entered the Royal Military Academy, graduating as a second lieutenant.

While serving in the Egyptian army in The Sudan, Nasser met three fellow officers—Zakariyyā Muḥyi al-Dīn (Zakaria Mohieddine), later vice president of the United Arab Republic; ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm ʿĀmir, later field marshal; and Anwar el-Sādāt, who would succeed Nasser as president. Together, they planned a secret revolutionary organization, the Free Officers, whose composition would be known only to Nasser; their aim was to oust the British and the Egyptian royal family.

In the 1948 Arab war against the newly created State of Israel, Nasser was an officer in one of three battalions surrounded for weeks by the Israelis in a group of Arab villages called the Faluja Pocket.

Attainment of power

On July 23, 1952, Nasser and 89 other Free Officers staged an almost bloodless coup d'état, ousting the monarchy. Sādāt favoured the immediate public execution of King Fārūq I and some members of the establishment, but Nasser vetoed the idea and permitted Fārūq and others to go into exile. The country was taken over by a Revolutionary Command Council of 11 officers controlled by Nasser, with Major General Muḥammad Naguib as the puppet head of state. For more than a year Nasser kept his real role so well hidden that astute foreign correspondents were unaware of his existence, but in the spring of 1954, in a complicated series of intrigues, Naguib was deposed and placed under house arrest, and Nasser emerged from the shadows and named himself prime minister. That same year an Egyptian fanatic allegedly tried to assassinate Nasser at a mass meeting in Alexandria. When the gunman confessed that he had been given the assignment by the Muslim Brotherhood, Nasser cracked down on this extremist Muslim religious organization.

In January 1956 Nasser announced the promulgation of a constitution under which Egypt became a socialist Arab state with a one-party political system and with Islam as the official religion. In June, 99.948 percent of the five million Egyptians voting marked their ballots for Nasser, the only candidate, for president. The constitution was approved by 99.8 percent.

As Nasser took titular as well as actual control, Egypt's prospects looked bright. A secret contract had been signed with Czechoslovakia for war matériel, and Great Britain and the United States had agreed to put up $270 million to finance the first stage of the Aswān High Dam project. But on July 20, 1956, the U.S. secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, canceled the U.S. offer; the next day Britain followed suit. Five days later, addressing a mass meeting in Alexandria, Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal, promising that the tolls Egypt collected in five years would build the dam. Both Britain and France had interests in the canal and conspired with Israel—whose relations with Egypt had grown even more tense after the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948–49—to best Nasser and regain control of the canal. According to their plan, on October 29, 1956, Israeli forces invaded the Sinai Peninsula. Two days later, French and British planes attacked Egyptian airfields. Although the Israelis occupied the Sinai Peninsula to Sharm al-Shaykh and the Egyptian air force was virtually destroyed, Nasser emerged from the brief war with undiminished prestige throughout the Arab world.

In Philosophy of the Revolution, which he wrote in 1954, Nasser told of “heroic and glorious roles which never found heroes to perform them” and outlined his aspiration to be the leader of the 55 million Arabs, then of the 224 million Africans, then of the 420 million followers of Islam. In 1958 Syria and Egypt formed the United Arab Republic, which Nasser hoped would someday include the entire Arab world. Syria withdrew in 1961, but Egypt continued to be known as the United Arab Republic until 1971. That was as close as Nasser ever came to realizing his tripartite dream.

Nasser's accomplishments

There were other accomplishments, however. The Aswān High Dam, built with the help of the Soviet Union, began operating in 1968; 20th-century life was introduced into many villages; industrialization was accelerated; land reforms broke up Egypt's large private estates; a partially successful campaign was conducted against corruption; and women were accorded more rights than they had ever had, including the right to vote. A new middle class began to occupy the political and economic positions once held in Egypt by Italians, Greeks, French, Britons, and other foreigners, whom Nasser now encouraged—sometimes not gently—to leave the country. Nasser's outstanding accomplishment was his survival for 18 years as Egypt's political leader, despite the strength of his opponents: communists, Copts, Jews, Muslim extremists, old political parties, rival military cliques, dispossessed landowners, supporters of Naguib, and what was left of the foreign colony.

On the negative side, Nasser made Egypt a police state, in which mail was opened, the communications media were strictly censored, the chief newspapers were nationalized, telephones were tapped, and visitors' rooms were searched. Political democracy in the Western sense was nonexistent. One-party candidates for office were handpicked by Nasser and his close associates. Political enemies were herded into concentration camps in the desert. Life was little changed for most fellahin. The birth rate remained so high as to defeat attempts to increase the living standard.

In foreign affairs Nasser joined Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and Jawaharlal Nehru of India as an advocate of nonalignment, or “positive neutrality.” At the Bandung Conference of Asian and African nations in 1955, he emerged as a world figure. His refusal to recognize Israel and Egypt's defeat by Israel in 1956 led him to divert vast sums into military channels that might have gone to implement his social revolution.

Egyptian troops supported the Republican Army in Yemen's civil war starting in 1962. But they were withdrawn in 1967 when war broke out again between Egypt and Israel in June after Nasser had requested that the United Nations remove its peacekeeping troops from the Gaza Strip and Sharm al-Shaykh and then closed the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping. The conflict came to be known as the Six-Day (or June) War. After the Egyptian air force was destroyed on the ground and the Egyptian army was forced to retreat across the Suez, Nasser attempted to resign, but massive street demonstrations and a vote of confidence by the National Assembly induced him to remain in office. The Soviet Union immediately began replacing all the destroyed war equipment and installed surface-to-air missiles along the Suez as a cover for Egypt's artillery emplacements. Nasser had tentatively accepted a U.S. plan leading to peace negotiations with Israel when he died, in 1970, from a heart attack.

Assessment

Although complex and revolutionary in his public life, privately Nasser was conservative and simple. No other Arab leader in modern times has succeeded in winning the sometimes hysterical support of Arab masses throughout the Middle East as did Nasser during the last 15 years of his life. Even the loss of two wars, with disastrous results for Egypt, did not dim the popularity of this charismatic, almost mythogenic, army officer who became the first true Egyptian to rule the country in several millennia, giving his people the dignity denied them under foreign rule. Yet he failed in his ambition to create a unified Arab world, and before his death he was forced to sacrifice some of Egypt's political independence for the military support of the Soviet Union.

Ne Win, U

born May 24, 1911, Paungdale, Burma [Myanmar]

died December 5, 2002, Yangôn, Myanmar

also called Shu Maung Burmese general who was the leader of Burma (Myanmar) from 1962 to 1988.

Ne Win studied at University College, Rangoon (Yangôn), from 1929 to 1931, and in the mid-1930s he became involved in the struggle for Burmese independence from the British. During World War II, after the Japanese invasion of Burma, he was one of the Thirty Comrades who, in 1941, went to Hainan to receive military training from the Japanese. Ne Win was an officer in the Japanese-sponsored Burma National Army from 1943 to 1945, but, becoming disillusioned with the Japanese, he helped organize the underground resistance. After Burma gained independence from Britain on January 4, 1948, he served as the second commander in chief of the army.

In 1958 Ne Win was asked to serve as prime minister in a caretaker government after former prime minister U Nu's administration had proved incapable of suppressing the ethnic insurgencies that were crippling the country. Ne Win held general elections in 1960, stepping down that same year after U Nu's reelection and the restoration of parliamentary government. However, on March 2, 1962, Ne Win carried out a coup d'état, imprisoning U Nu and establishing the Revolutionary Council of the Union of Burma, whose members were drawn almost exclusively from the armed forces.

In his subsequent rule, Ne Win combined a military dictatorship with a socialist economic program, the cornerstone of which was the nationalization of Burma's major economic enterprises. His government broke Indian, Chinese, and Pakistani traders' control over the country's economy, and it embarked on an ambitious though unsuccessful program of rapid industrialization. Ne Win steered a neutralist course in foreign policy and isolated Burma from contacts with the outside world. His regime made Burma into a one-party state in 1964; the sole party permitted to exist was the Burmese Socialist Program Party (BSPP), which had been founded by Ne Win and which was dominated by military officers. Ne Win and his colleagues formulated a new constitution in 1972–73 that provided for a one-party state in Burma. A new government was elected in 1974 with Ne Win as president (1974–81). He subsequently retained the post of chairman of the BSPP, remaining the country's preeminent leader.

By the late 1980s, Ne Win's socialist and isolationist policies had turned Burma into one of the world's poorest countries. Governmental corruption and mismanagement had driven a great deal of the country's economic activity underground into the black market, and Burma, which had once been a leading rice exporter, was beginning to experience food shortages. In late 1987 widespread antigovernment rioting broke out in the major cities, prompting Ne Win in July 1988 to resign from the chairmanship of the BSPP. The BSPP was replaced by the State Law and Order Restoration Council, which was also headed by military officers, but Ne Win remained active behind the scenes. In March 2002, however, he was placed under house arrest following the imprisonment of several family members who were accused of plotting a coup against the country's military junta; no charges were brought against Ne Win, but he remained under house arrrest until his death.

Netanyahu, Benjamin

born October 21, 1949, Tel Aviv [now Tel Aviv–Yafo], Israel

byname Bibi Israeli politician and diplomat, who was his country's prime minister from 1996 to 1999.

In 1963 Netanyahu, the son of the historian Benzion Netanyahu, moved with his family to Philadelphia in the United States. After enlisting in the Israeli military in 1967, he became a soldier in the elite special operations unit Sayeret Matcal and was on the team that rescued a hijacked jet plane at the Tel Aviv airport in 1972. He later studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.B.A., 1976), taking time out to fight in the Yom Kippur War in Israel in 1973. After his brother Jonathan died while leading the successful Entebbe raid in 1976, Benjamin founded the Jonathan Institute, which sponsored conferences on terrorism.

Netanyahu held several ambassadorship positions before being elected to the Knesset (Israeli parliament) as a Likud member in 1988. He served as deputy minister of foreign affairs (1988–91) and then as a deputy minister in Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's coalition cabinet (1991–92). In 1993 he easily won election as the leader of the Likud party, succeeding Yitzhak Shamir in that post. Netanyahu became noted for his opposition to the 1993 Israel-PLO peace accords and the resulting Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The governing Labour Party entered the 1996 elections with weakened electoral appeal following Rabin's assassination in November 1995 and a series of suicide bombings by Muslim militants early in 1996. Netanyahu eked out a victory margin of about 1 percent over Prime Minister Shimon Peres in the elections of May 29, 1996, the first in which the prime minister was directly elected. Netanyahu became the youngest person ever to serve as Israel's prime minister when he formed a government on June 18.

Unrest dominated Netanyahu's prime ministership. Soon after he entered office, relations with Syria deteriorated, and his decision in September 1996 to open an ancient tunnel near Al-Aqsa Mosque angered Palestinians and sparked intense fighting. Netanyahu then reversed his earlier opposition to the 1993 peace accords and in 1997 agreed to withdraw troops from most of the West Bank town of Hebron. Pressure from within his coalition, however, led Netanyahu to announce his intention to establish a new Jewish settlement on land claimed by Palestine. He also significantly lowered the amount of land that would be handed over to Palestine during Israel's next phase of withdrawal from the West Bank. Violent protests, including a series of bombings, ensued. In 1998 Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yāsir ʿArafāt participated in peace talks that resulted in the Wye Memorandum, the terms of which included placing as much as 40 percent of the West Bank under Palestinian control. The agreement was opposed by right-wing groups in Israel, and several factions in Netanyahu's government coalition quit. In 1998 the Knesset dissolved the government, and new elections were scheduled for May 1999.

Netanyahu's reelection campaign was hindered by a fragmented right wing as well as by voters' growing dislike of his inconsistent peace policies and his often abrasive style. In addition, a series of scandals had plagued his administration, including his appointment in 1997 of Roni Bar-On, a Likud party functionary, as attorney general. Allegations that Bar-On would arrange a plea bargain for a Netanyahu ally who had been charged with fraud and bribery led to a series of confidence votes in the Knesset. With his core political support undermined, Netanyahu was easily defeated by Ehud Barak, leader of the Labour Party, in the 1999 elections.

Netanyahu was succeeded as head of Likud in 1999 by Ariel Sharon but remained a popular figure in the party. When early elections were called in 2001, Netanyahu, who had resigned his seat in the Knesset and thus was ineligible to run for prime minister, unsuccessfully challenged Sharon for leadership of the party. In Sharon's government, Netanyahu served as foreign minister (2002–03) and finance minister (2003–05).

Neto, Agostinho

born Sept. 17, 1922, Icolo e Bengo, Angola

died Sept. 10, 1979, Moscow Russia, U.S.S.R.

in full Antônio Agostinho Neto poet, physician, and first president of the People's Republic of Angola.

Neto first became known in 1948, when he published a volume of poems in Luanda and joined a national cultural movement that was aimed at “rediscovering” indigenous Angolan culture (similar to the Negritude movement of the French-speaking African countries). His first of many arrests for political activities came shortly thereafter in Lisbon, where he had gone to study medicine.

Neto returned home as a doctor in 1959 but was arrested in the presence of his patients in June 1960 because of his militant opposition to the colonial authorities. When his patients protested his arrest, the police opened fire, killing some and injuring 200. Neto spent the next two years in detention in Cape Verde and in Portugal, where he produced a new volume of verse. In 1962 he managed to escape to Morocco, where he joined the Angolan liberation movement in exile. At the end of 1962 he was elected president of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA).

When in 1975 Angola became independent, it was divided among its three warring independence movements. The MPLA forces, however, with Cuban help, held the central part of the country, including the capital, and Neto, a Marxist, was proclaimed president.

Neto was widely recognized as a gifted poet. His work was published in a number of Portuguese and Angolan reviews and was included in Mário de Andrade's Antologia da Poesia Negra de Expressão Portuguesa (1958).

Ngo Dinh Diem

born Jan. 3, 1901, Quang Binh province, northern Vietnam

died Nov. 2, 1963, Cho Lon, South Vietnam

Vietnamese political leader who served as president, with dictatorial powers, of South Vietnam from 1955 until his assassination.

Diem was born into one of Vietnam's noble families. His ancestors in the 17th century had been among the first Vietnamese converts to Roman Catholicism. He was on friendly terms with the Vietnamese imperial family in his youth, and in 1933 he served as the emperor Bao Dai's minister of the interior, but he resigned that same year in frustration at French unwillingness to countenance his legislative reforms. Relinquishing his titles and decorations, he spent the next 12 years living quietly in Hue. In 1945 Diem was captured by the forces of the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh, who invited him to join his independent government in the North, hoping that Diem's presence would win Catholic support. But Diem rejected the proposal and went into self-imposed exile, living abroad for most of the next decade.

In 1954 Diem returned at Bao Dai's request to serve as prime minister of a U.S.-backed government in South Vietnam. After defeating Bao Dai in a government-controlled referendum in October 1955, he ousted the emperor and made himself president of the newly declared Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam). Diem refused to carry out the Geneva Accords, which had called for free elections to be held throughout Vietnam in 1956 in order to establish a national government. With the south torn by dissident groups and political factions, Diem established an autocratic regime that was staffed at the highest levels by members of his own family. With U.S. military and economic aid, he was able to resettle hundreds of thousands of refugees from North Vietnam in the south, but his own Catholicism and the preference he showed for fellow Roman Catholics made him unacceptable to Buddhists, who were an overwhelming majority in South Vietnam. Diem never fulfilled his promise of land reforms, and during his rule, Communist influence and appeal grew among southerners as the Communist-inspired National Liberation Front, or Viet Cong, launched an increasingly intense guerrilla war against his government. The military tactics Diem used against the insurgency were heavy-handed and ineffective and only served to deepen his government's unpopularity and isolation.

Diem's imprisoning and killing of hundreds of Buddhists, who he alleged were abetting Communist insurgents, finally persuaded the United States to withdraw its support from him. Diem's generals assassinated him during a coup d'état.

Nguyen Van Thieu

born April 5, 1923, Tri Thuy, Ninh Thuan province, Vietnam

died September 29, 2001, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.

president of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) from 1967 until the republic fell to the forces of North Vietnam in 1975.

The son of a small landowner, Thieu joined the communist-oriented Viet Minh in 1945 but later fought for the French colonial regime against the Viet Minh. In 1954 he was put in charge of the Vietnamese National Military Academy and, after 1956, continued to serve under the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam. Thieu played an important part in a successful coup against Diem in 1963. In 1965 he became chief of state in a military government headed by Premier Nguyen Cao Ky. In 1967 he was elected president under a new constitution promulgated in that year. He was reelected without opposition in 1971.

Thieu's emergence coincided with the beginning of major U.S. intervention in the war against the Viet Cong insurgents and North Vietnam. Despite criticism of the authoritarian nature of his regime, he retained the support of the United States throughout the administrations of the U.S. presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. He continued to consolidate his power after the peace agreements of 1973 (in which his government was a somewhat reluctant participant) and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Vietnam.

Communist gains in South Vietnam's northern provinces early in 1975 prompted Thieu to recall troops to defend the capital city, Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). Badly managed, the retreat turned into a rout, allowing communist forces to surround the capital. After resisting for several days, Thieu was persuaded that his resignation might permit a negotiated settlement of the war. On April 21, 1975, in a speech denouncing the United States, he resigned in favour of his vice president, Tran Van Huong, and shortly afterward left the country. He went first to Taiwan and later to England, taking up residence in Surrey, before settling in the United States.

Nixon, Richard M.

Introduction

born January 9, 1913, Yorba Linda, California, U.S.

died April 22, 1994, New York, New York

in full Richard Milhous Nixon 37th president of the United States (1969–74), who, faced with almost certain impeachment for his role in the Watergate Scandal, became the first American president to resign from office. He was also vice president (1953–61) under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. See also Cabinet of President Richard M. Nixon.)

Early life and congressional career

Nixon was the second of five children born to Frank Nixon, a service station owner and grocer, and Hannah Milhous Nixon, whose devout Quakerism would exert a strong influence on her son. Nixon graduated from Whittier College in Whittier, California, in 1934 and from Duke University Law School in Durham, North Carolina, in 1937. Returning to Whittier to practice law, he met Thelma Catherine (“Pat”) Ryan (Pat Nixon), a teacher and amateur actress, after the two were cast in the same play at a local community theatre. The couple married in 1940.

In August 1942, after a brief stint in the Office of Price Administration in Washington, D.C., Nixon joined the navy, serving as an aviation ground officer in the Pacific and rising to the rank of lieutenant commander. Following his return to civilian life in 1946, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, defeating five-term liberal Democratic Congressman Jerry Voorhis in a campaign that relied heavily on innuendos about Voorhis's alleged communist sympathies. Running for reelection in 1948, Nixon entered and won both the Democratic and Republican primaries, which thus eliminated the need to participate in the general election. As a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAAC) in 1948–50, he took a leading role in the investigation of Alger Hiss, a former State Department official accused of spying for the Soviet Union. In dramatic testimony before the committee, Whittaker Chambers, a journalist and former spy, claimed that in 1937 Hiss had given him classified State Department papers for transmission to a Soviet agent. Hiss vehemently denied the charge but was later convicted of perjury. Nixon's hostile questioning of Hiss during the committee hearings did much to make his national reputation as a fervent anticommunist.

In 1950 Nixon successfully ran for the United States Senate against Democratic Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas. After his campaign distributed “pink sheets” comparing Douglas's voting record to that of Vito Marcantonio, a left-wing representative from New York, the Independent Review, a small Southern California newspaper, nicknamed him “Tricky Dick.” The epithet later became a favourite among Nixon's opponents.

Vice presidency

At the Republican convention in 1952, Nixon won nomination as vice president on a ticket with Eisenhower, largely because of his anticommunist credentials but also because Republicans thought he could draw valuable support in the West. In the midst of the campaign, the New York Post reported that Nixon had been maintaining a secret “slush fund” provided by contributions from a group of Southern California businessmen. Eisenhower was willing to give Nixon a chance to clear himself but emphasized that Nixon needed to emerge from the crisis “as clean as a hound's tooth.” On September 23, 1952, Nixon delivered a nationally televised address, the so-called “Checkers” speech, in which he acknowledged the existence of the fund but denied that any of it had been used improperly. To demonstrate that he had not enriched himself in office, he listed his family's financial assets and liabilities in embarrassing detail, noting that his wife, Pat, unlike the wives of so many Democratic politicians, did not own a fur coat but only “a respectable Republican cloth coat.” The speech is perhaps best remembered for its maudlin conclusion, in which Nixon admitted accepting one political gift—a cocker spaniel that his six-year-old daughter, Tricia, had named Checkers. “Regardless of what they say about it,” he declared, “we are going to keep it.” Although Nixon initially thought that the speech had been a failure, the public responded favourably, and a reassured Eisenhower told him, “You're my boy.” The Eisenhower-Nixon ticket defeated the Democratic candidates, Adlai E. Stevenson and John Sparkman, with just under 34 million popular votes to their 27.3 million; the vote in the electoral college was 442 to 89.

During his two terms as vice president, Nixon campaigned actively for Republican candidates but otherwise did not assume significant responsibilities. (Asked at a press conference to describe Nixon's contributions to his administration's policies, Eisenhower replied: “If you give me a week, I might think of one.”) Nevertheless, his performance in office helped to make the role of vice president more prominent and to enhance its constitutional importance. In 1955–57 Eisenhower suffered a series of serious illnesses, including a heart attack, an attack of ileitis, and a stroke. While Eisenhower was incapacitated, Nixon was called on to chair several cabinet sessions and National Security Council meetings, though real power lay in a close circle of Eisenhower advisers, from which Nixon had always been excluded. After his stroke, Eisenhower formalized an agreement with Nixon on the powers and responsibilities of the vice president in the event of presidential disability; the agreement was accepted by later administrations until the adoption of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution in 1967. Nixon's vice presidency was also noteworthy for his many well-publicized trips abroad, including a 1958 tour of Latin America—a trip that journalist Walter Lippmann termed a “diplomatic Pearl Harbor”—during which his car was stoned, slapped, and spat upon by anti-American protesters, and a 1959 visit to the Soviet Union, highlighted by an impromptu profanity-filled “kitchen debate” in Moscow with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Election of 1960

Nixon received his party's presidential nomination in 1960 and was opposed in the general election by Democrat John F. Kennedy. The campaign was memorable for an unprecedented series of four televised debates between the two candidates. Although Nixon performed well rhetorically, Kennedy managed to convey an appealing image of youthfulness, energy, and physical poise, which convinced many that he had won the debates. In the closest presidential contest since Grover Cleveland defeated James G. Blaine in 1884, Nixon lost to Kennedy by fewer than 120,000 popular votes. Citing irregularities in Illinois and Texas, many observers questioned whether Kennedy had legally won those states, and some prominent Republicans—including Eisenhower—even urged Nixon to contest the results. He chose not to, however, declaring that

I could think of no worse example for nations abroad, who for the first time were trying to put free electoral procedures into effect, than that of the United States wrangling over the results of our presidential election, and even suggesting that the presidency itself could be stolen by thievery at the ballot box.

Nixon's supporter's and critics alike, both then and later, praised him for the dignity and unselfishness with which he handled defeat and the suspicion that vote fraud had cost him the presidency.

Nixon then retired to private life in California, where he wrote a best-selling book, Six Crises (1961). In 1962 he reluctantly decided to run for governor of California but lost to incumbent Democrat Edmund G. (“Pat”) Brown. In a memorable postelection news conference, he announced his retirement from politics and attacked the press, declaring that it would not “have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” He moved to New York City to practice law and over the next few years built a reputation as an expert in foreign affairs and a leader who could appeal to both moderates and conservatives in his party.

Presidency

Nixon won the Republican nomination for president in 1968 by putting together a coalition that included Southern conservatives led by Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. In exchange for Southern support, Nixon promised to appoint “strict constructionists” to the federal judiciary, to name a Southerner to the Supreme Court, to oppose court-ordered busing, and to choose a vice presidential candidate acceptable to the South. With Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew as his running mate, Nixon campaigned against Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey and third-party candidate George Wallace on a vague platform promising an honourable peace in Vietnam—Nixon said that he had a “secret plan” to end the war—the restoration of law and order in the cities, a crackdown on illegal drugs, and an end to the draft. Humphrey, who as Lyndon B. Johnson's vice president was heavily burdened by the latter's unpopular Vietnam policies, called for an end to the bombing of North Vietnam as “an acceptable risk for peace.” Johnson himself halted the bombing on October 31, less than one week before the election, in preparation for direct negotiations with Hanoi. Had he taken this step earlier, Humphrey might have won the election, as polls showed him gaining rapidly on Nixon in the final days of the campaign. Nixon won the election by a narrow margin, 31.7 million popular votes to Humphrey's nearly 30.9 million; the electoral vote was 301 to 191.

Domestic policies

Despite expectations from some observers that Nixon would be a “do-nothing” president, his administration undertook a number of important reforms in welfare policy, civil rights, law enforcement, the environment, and other areas. Nixon's proposed Family Assistance Program (FAP), intended to replace the service-oriented Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), would have provided working and nonworking poor families with a guaranteed annual income—though Nixon preferred to call it a “negative income tax.” Although the measure was defeated in the Senate, its failure helped to generate support for incremental legislation incorporating similar ideas—such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI), which provided a guaranteed income to the elderly, the blind, and the disabled; and automatic cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for Social Security recipients—and it also prompted the expansion and improvement of existing programs, such as food stamps and health insurance for low-income families. In the area of civil rights, Nixon's administration instituted so-called “set aside” policies to reserve a certain percentage of jobs for minorities on federally funded construction projects—the first “affirmative action” program. Although Nixon opposed school busing and delayed taking action on desegregation until federal court orders forced his hand, his administration drastically reduced the percentage of African American students attending all-black schools. In addition, funding for many federal civil rights agencies, in particular the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), was substantially increased while Nixon was in office. In response to pressure from consumer and environmental groups, Nixon proposed legislation that created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). His revenue-sharing program, called “New Federalism,” provided state and local governments with billions of federal tax dollars.

Prior to 1973 the most important of Nixon's domestic problems was the economy. In order to reduce inflation he initially tried to restrict federal spending, but beginning in 1971 his budget proposals contained deficits of several billion dollars, the largest in American history up to that time. Nixon's New Economic Policy, announced in August 1971 in response to continuing inflation, increasing unemployment, and a deteriorating trade deficit, included an 8 percent devaluation of the dollar, new surcharges on imports, and unprecedented peacetime controls on wages and prices. These policies produced temporary improvements in the economy by the end of 1972, but, once price and wage controls were lifted, inflation returned with a vengeance, reaching 8.8 percent in 1973 and 12.2 percent in 1974.

Foreign affairs

Vietnam War

Aiming to achieve “peace with honor” in the Vietnam War, Nixon gradually reduced the number of U.S. military personnel in Vietnam. Under his policy of “Vietnamization,” combat roles were transferred to South Vietnamese troops, who nevertheless remained heavily dependent on American supplies and air support. At the same time, however, Nixon resumed the bombing of North Vietnam (suspended by President Johnson in October 1968) and expanded the air and ground war to neighbouring Cambodia and Laos. In the spring of 1970, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces attacked North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia, which prompted widespread protests in the United States; one of these demonstrations—at Kent State University on May 4, 1970—ended tragically when soldiers of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of about 2,000 protesters, killing four and wounding nine.

After intensive negotiations between National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Le Duc Tho, the two sides reached an agreement in October 1972, and Kissinger announced, “Peace is at hand.” But the South Vietnamese raised objections, and the agreement quickly broke down. An intensive 11-day bombing campaign of Hanoi and other North Vietnamese cities in late December (the “Christmas bombings”) was followed by more negotiations, and a new agreement was finally reached in January 1973 and signed in Paris. It included an immediate cease-fire, the withdrawal of all American military personnel, the release of all prisoners of war, and an international force to keep the peace. For their work on the accord, Kissinger and Tho were awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize for Peace (though Tho declined the honour).

China and the Soviet Union

Nixon's most significant achievement in foreign affairs may have been the establishment of direct relations with the People's Republic of China after a 21-year estrangement. Following a series of low-level diplomatic contacts in 1970 and the lifting of U.S. trade and travel restrictions the following year, the Chinese indicated that they would welcome high-level discussions, and Nixon sent his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, to China for secret talks. The thaw in relations became apparent with the “ping-pong diplomacy” conducted by American and Chinese table-tennis teams in reciprocal visits in 1971–72. Nixon's visit to China in February–March 1972, the first by an American president while in office, concluded with the Shanghai Communiqué, in which the United States formally recognized the “one-China” principle—that there is only one China, and that Taiwan is a part of China.

The rapprochement with China, undertaken in part to take advantage of the growing Sino-Soviet rift in the late 1960s, gave Nixon more leverage in his dealings with the Soviet Union. By 1971 the Soviets were more amenable to improved relations with the United States, and in May 1972 Nixon paid a state visit to Moscow to sign 10 formal agreements, the most important of which were the nuclear-arms limitation treaties known as SALT I (based on the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks conducted between the United States and the Soviet Union beginning in 1969) and a memorandum, the Basic Principles of U.S.-Soviet Relations, summarizing the new relationship between the two countries in the new era of détente.

The Middle East and Latin America

Nixon was less successful in the Middle East, where his administration's comprehensive plan for peace, the Rogers Plan (named for Nixon's first secretary of state, William Rogers), was rejected by both Israel and the Soviet Union. After the 1973 Arab-Israeli war (the “Yom Kippur War”), Kissinger's back-and-forth visits between the Arab states and Israel (dubbed “shuttle diplomacy”) helped to broker disengagement agreements but did little to improve U.S. relations with the Arabs.

Fearing communist revolution in Latin America, the Nixon administration helped to undermine the coalition government of Chile's Marxist President Salvador Allende, elected in 1970. After Allende nationalized American-owned mining companies, the administration restricted Chile's access to international economic assistance and discouraged private investment, increased aid to the Chilean military, cultivated secret contacts with anti-Allende police and military officials, and undertook various other destabilizing measures, including funneling millions of dollars in covert payments to Chilean opposition groups in 1970–73. In September 1973 Allende was overthrown in a military coup led by army commander in chief General Augusto Pinochet.

Watergate and other scandals

Renominated with Agnew in 1972, Nixon defeated his Democratic challenger, the liberal Senator George S. McGovern, in one of the largest landslide victories in the history of American presidential elections: 46.7 million to 28.9 million in the popular vote and 520 to 17 in the electoral vote. Despite his resounding victory, Nixon would soon be forced to resign in disgrace in the worst political scandal in United States history.

The Watergate Scandal stemmed from illegal activities by Nixon and his aides related to the burglary and wiretapping of the national headquarters of the Democratic Party at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C.; eventually it came to encompass allegations of other loosely related crimes committed both before and after the break-in. The five men involved in the burglary, who were hired by the Republican Party's Committee to Re-elect the President, were arrested and charged on June 17, 1972. In the days following the arrests, Nixon secretly directed the White House counsel, John Dean, to oversee a cover-up to conceal the administration's involvement. Nixon also obstructed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in its inquiry and authorized secret cash payments to the Watergate burglars in an effort to prevent them from implicating the administration.

Several major newspapers investigated the possible involvement of the White House in the burglary. Leading the pack was The Washington Post and its two hungry newshounds, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, whose stories were based largely on information from an unnamed source called “Deep Throat.” The mysterious identity of Deep Throat became a news story in its own right and led to decades of speculation. (W. Mark Felt, a top-ranking FBI official at the time of the investigation, revealed himself as the informant in 2005.) In February 1973 a special Senate committee—the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, chaired by Senator Sam Ervin—was established to look into the Watergate affair. In televised committee hearings, Dean accused the president of involvement in the cover-up, and others testified to illegal activities by the administration and the campaign staff, including the use of federal agencies to harass Nixon's perceived enemies (many of whose names appeared on an “enemies list” of prominent politicians, journalists, entertainers, academics, and others) and acts of politically inspired espionage by a special White House investigative unit known as the “plumbers,” because they investigated news leaks.

In July the committee learned that in 1969 Nixon had installed a recording system in the White House and that all the president's conversations in the Oval Office had been recorded. When the tapes were subpoenaed by Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor appointed to investigate the Watergate affair, Nixon refused to comply, offering to provide summary transcripts instead. Cox rejected the offer. Then, in a series of episodes that came to be known as the Saturday Night Massacre, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox, and Richardson resigned rather than comply. Nixon then fired Richardson's assistant, William Ruckelshaus, when he too refused to fire Cox. Cox was finally removed by Solicitor General Robert Bork, though a federal district court subsequently ruled the action illegal.

Amid calls for his impeachment, Nixon agreed to the appointment of another special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, and promised that he would not fire him without congressional consent. After protesting in a news conference that “I am not a crook,” Nixon released seven of the nine tapes requested by Cox, one of which contained a suspicious gap of 18 and one-half minutes. Although damning, the tapes did not contain the “smoking gun” that would prove that the president himself ordered the break-in or attempted to obstruct justice. Jaworski later subpoenaed 64 tapes that Nixon continued to withhold on grounds of “executive privilege,” and in July 1974 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Nixon's claims of executive privilege were invalid. By that time the House Judiciary Committee had already voted to recommend three articles of impeachment, relating to obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and failure to comply with congressional subpoenas. On August 5, in compliance with the Supreme Court's ruling, Nixon submitted transcripts of a conversation taped on June 23, 1972, in which he discussed a plan to use the Central Intelligence Agency to block the FBI's investigation of the Watergate break-in. The smoking gun had finally been found.

Faced with the near-certain prospect of impeachment by the House and conviction in the Senate, Nixon announced his resignation on the evening of August 8, 1974, effective at noon the next day. He was succeeded by Gerald Ford, whom he had appointed vice president in 1973 after Agnew resigned his office amid charges of having committed bribery, extortion, and tax evasion during his tenure as governor of Maryland. Nixon was pardoned by President Ford on September 8, 1974.

Retirement and death

Nixon retired with his wife to the seclusion of his estate in San Clemente, California. He wrote RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (1978) and several books on international affairs and American foreign policy, modestly rehabilitating his public reputation and earning a role as an elder statesman and foreign-policy expert. Nixon spent his last years campaigning for American political support and financial aid for Russia and the other former Soviet republics. Nixon died of a massive stroke in New York City in April 1994, 10 months after his wife's death from lung cancer. In ceremonies after his death, President Bill Clinton and other dignitaries praised him for his diplomatic achievements. He was buried beside his wife at his birthplace.

Nkrumah, Kwame

Introduction

born September 1909, Nkroful, Gold Coast [now Ghana]

died April 27, 1972, Bucharest, Romania

Ghanaian nationalist leader who led the Gold Coast's drive for independence from Britain and presided over its emergence as the new nation of Ghana. He headed the country from independence in 1957 until he was overthrown by a coup in 1966.

Early years.

Kwame Nkrumah's father was a goldsmith and his mother a retail trader. Baptized a Roman Catholic, Nkrumah spent nine years at the Roman Catholic elementary school in nearby Half Assini. After graduation from Achimota College in 1930, he started his career as a teacher at Roman Catholic junior schools in Elmina and Axim and at a seminary.

Increasingly drawn to politics, Nkrumah decided to pursue further studies in the United States. He entered Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1935 and, after graduating in 1939, obtained master's degrees from Lincoln and from the University of Pennsylvania. He studied the literature of socialism, notably Karl Marx and Vladimir I. Lenin, and of nationalism, especially Marcus Garvey, the black American leader of the 1920s. Eventually, Nkrumah came to describe himself as a “nondenominational Christian and a Marxist socialist.” He also immersed himself in political work, reorganizing and becoming president of the African Students' Organization of the United States and Canada. He left the United States in May 1945 and went to England, where he organized the 5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester.

Meanwhile, in the Gold Coast, J.B. Danquah had formed the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) to work for self-government by constitutional means. Invited to serve as the UGCC's general secretary, Nkrumah returned home in late 1947. As general secretary, he addressed meetings throughout the Gold Coast and began to create a mass base for the new movement. When extensive riots occurred in February 1948, the British briefly arrested Nkrumah and other leaders of the UGCC.

When a split developed between the middle-class leaders of the UGCC and the more radical supporters of Nkrumah, he formed in June 1949 the new Convention Peoples' Party (CPP), a mass-based party that was committed to a program of immediate self-government. In January 1950, Nkrumah initiated a campaign of “positive action,” involving nonviolent protests, strikes, and noncooperation with the British colonial authorities.

From prison to prime ministry.

In the ensuing crisis, services throughout the country were disrupted, and Nkrumah was again arrested and sentenced to one year's imprisonment. But the Gold Coast's first general election (Feb. 8, 1951) demonstrated the support the CPP had already won. Elected to Parliament, Nkrumah was released from prison to become leader of government business and, in 1952, prime minister of the Gold Coast.

When the Gold Coast and the British Togoland trust territory became an independent state within the British Commonwealth—as Ghana—in March 1957, Nkrumah became the new nation's first prime minister. In 1958 Nkrumah's government legalized the imprisonment without trial of those it regarded as security risks. It soon became apparent that Nkrumah's style of government was to be authoritarian. Nkrumah's popularity in the country rose, however, as new roads, schools, and health facilities were built and as the policy of Africanization created better career opportunities for Ghanaians.

By a plebiscite of 1960 Ghana became a republic and Nkrumah became its president, with wide legislative and executive powers under a new constitution. Nkrumah then concentrated his attention on campaigning for the political unity of black Africa, and he began to lose touch with realities in Ghana. His administration became involved in magnificent but often ruinous development projects, so that a once-prosperous country became crippled with foreign debt. His government's Second Development Plan, announced in 1959, had to be abandoned in 1961 when the deficit in the balance of payments rose to more than $125 million. Contraction of the economy led to widespread labour unrest and to a general strike in September 1961. From that time Nkrumah began to evolve a much more rigorous apparatus of political control and to turn increasingly to the communist countries for support.

President of Ghana and afterward.

The attempted assassination of Nkrumah at Kulugungu in August 1962—the first of several—led to his increasing seclusion from public life and to the growth of a personality cult, as well as to a massive buildup of the country's internal security forces. Early in 1964 Ghana was officially designated a one-party state, with Nkrumah as life president of both nation and party. While the administration of the country passed increasingly into the hands of self-serving and corrupt party officials, Nkrumah busied himself with the ideological education of a new generation of black African political activists. Meanwhile, the economic crisis in Ghana worsened and shortages of foodstuffs and other goods became chronic. On Feb. 24, 1966, while Nkrumah was visiting Peking, the army and police in Ghana seized power. Returning to West Africa, Nkrumah found asylum in Guinea, where he spent the remainder of his life. He died of cancer in Bucharest in 1972.