December 16, 1995

In their landmark attempt to create a single, unifying currency for the 21st century, Europe's leaders today officially named it the Euro and agreed on a timetable for introducing it by 2002. By putting aside months of bickering and indecision, today's agreement, while mostly symbolic, reflects a growing momentum among many European leaders to forge a single currency and a broader economic and political integration of the Continent that they hope will invigorate its flagging economy and insure greater political stability and peace.

French railway workers voted today to end their three-week-old national strike, signaling an end to the country's most serious labor unrest in a decade. Still, the sour mood of widespread discontent remained.

Stepped-up negotiations between the White House and Republicans to balance the budget by 2002 ended in acrimony only hours after they began yesterday, with each side angrily criticizing the other's proposal. Within hours of the breakdown, efforts to work out a deal for a temporary spending bill to replace one that expired at midnight also fell apart, and various Government agencies prepared to shut down today for the second time in a month.[Page 12.]

A book based on the diary of one of President Slobodan Milosevic's closest political colleagues has created a sensation here because, contrary to the official propaganda, it depicts the Serbian leader as deliberately provoking war in the former Yugoslavia. The author, Borislav Jovic, was President of Yugoslavia until just before the outbreak of the conflict in 1991, with battles between Serbia and the former Yugoslav republic of Croatia.

A constitutional fight between the Senate Whitewater committee and the White House intensified when the panel voted along party lines to ask the full Senate to seek a court order to gain documents that President Clinton has refused to turn over. The Republicans said the papers they seek may show that senior White House officials improperly used confidential Government information about Federal investigations into the Arkansas dealings of the Clintons and their associates.