RIAN News Service looks back at the main events of the outgoing year; below the month-by-month review of 2009 continues, with April:
April 1
* Albania and Croatia officially become NATO's newest members, bringing the number of countries in the military alliance to 28
* U.S. and Russian Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev meet for the first time in London and announce the restart of talks on a new nuclear arms reduction treaty
April 2
* Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev signs a law to end the deployment of foreign military contingents at the Manas airbase in the north of the country
April 3
* Leaders of NATO member countries gather for a two-day summit to mark NATO's 60th anniversary and discuss new challenges facing the world's most powerful military alliance
April 5
* North Korea launches a long-range rocket over Japan, defying world pressure
April 6
* Powerful earthquake hits the mountainous region of Abruzzo in central Italy, killing up to 300 people and leaving around 50,000 homeless
April 15
* India successfully test-fires a Prithvi-II ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead
April 16
* The counter-terrorism operation that was launched in Russia's volatile republic of Chechnya in 1999 finishes
April 21
* Russia and China agree to build a new branch from the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline toward China
April 23
* Armenia and Turkey agree on a "roadmap" aimed at normalizing bilateral relations
April 25
* North Korea restarts work at nuclear facilities that produce weapons-grade plutonium following the withdrawal from six-nation talks on its controversial nuclear and missile programs
April 30
* The World Health Organization raises its level of swine flu pandemic alert from phase 4 to 5, one step short of a full-scale pandemic
2009 Review: April
© RIA Novosti . Dmitry Korobeinikov
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RIAN News Service looks back at the main events of the outgoing year; below the month-by-month review of 2009 continues, with April:
