January 1994, Pages. 102-104

Facts For Your Files: A Chronology of U.S.-Middle East Relations

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Oct. 1: Delegates from 43 nations meeting in Washington pledged nearly $2 billion in aid to the West Bank and Gaza Strip over the next five years. At the White House, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Jordan's Crown Prince Hassan met with President Clinton. 

Britain and France introduced a U.N. Security Council resolution to tighten sanctions against Libya for failing to turn over suspects in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Oct. 2: In six Gaza Strip raids, Israeli troops using helicopters and anti-tank missiles killed two top Hamas commanders and arrested 16 Palestinians. On the West Bank, Jewish settlers attacked two Palestinian women picking figs, killing Ratibah Abdel Karim Jabra, 70, and wounding Rifah Mahmoud Jasser.

Oct. 3: In Mogadishu, 12 American soldiers were killed, 78 wounded, and a helicopter pilot was captured during a 15-hour battle against guerrillas loyal to Somali Gen. Mohamed Farah Aidid. Somali casualties were estimated at 300 killed and 700 wounded, including hundreds of women and children.

A week after anti-Izetbegovic forces proclaimed independence for the northwest Bosnian region of Bihac, gunmen loyal to the Bosnian government attacked a radio station, killing a policeman, in the Bihac town of Velika Kladusa.

Oct. 4: President Clinton ordered several hundred U.S. troops sent as reinforcements to Somalia.

The trial of Mohammed Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Mahmud Abouhalima and Ahmad Ajaj, accused of bombing the World Trade Center, opened in New York.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak won a third six-year term in office, receiving 94.9 percent of the vote in a national referendum in which he was the only candidate.

The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to maintain its peacekeeping forces in the former Yugoslavia for six more months.

Oct. 5: State Department spokesman Michael McCurry confirmed that the Clinton administration had deducted $437 million from Israel's $2 billion installment in U.S. Loan guarantees as a dollar-for-dollar penalty for Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Secretary of Defense Les Aspin met with legislators on Capitol Hill in an effort to stem calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Somalia.

Oct. 6: PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin met in Cairo to discuss the transition to Palestinian self-rule in Jericho and the Gaza Strip.

Following President Clinton's decision to send 2,000 more troops to Somalia immediately, but then withdraw all U.S. forces by March 31, Senate leaders delayed a vote to force U.S. withdrawal from the African nation.

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party won 86 parliamentary seats, with former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League winning 72, giving neither a majority in the 217-seat parliament.

Talks broke down between the U.N. and Iraq on allowing Iraqi oil sales of up to $1.6 billion in accordance with terms of the Gulf war cease-fire.

Oct. 7: Former KGB General Geidar Aliyev was overwhelmingly elected president of Azerbaijan, replacing former President Abulfez Elchibey, who had fled the capital following a June military rebellion.

Oct. 10: Special U.S. envoy to Somalia Robert Oakley arrived in Mogadishu and met with members of Mohamed Farah Aidid's clan.

Lawyers representing two Libyans accused of the bombing of Pam Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, said they had advised their clients not to surrender to Scottish authorities.

Oct. 11: The PLO Central Committee, meeting in Tunis, ratified the PLO-Israeli peace accord by a vote of 63-8, with 11 absent or abstaining, and appointed PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat head of a newly created Palestinian National Authority in Jericho and the Gaza Strip.

A Senate Governmental Affairs Committee aide confirmed that CIA Director James Woolsey had told the committee that Israel has sold advanced military technology to China for more than a decade.

William Nygaard, the Norwegian publisher of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, was shot and wounded outside his home near Oslo.

Oct. 12: Israel announced it would allow 5,000 exiled Palestinians to return to their homes each year and would release "a significant number of prisoners" in Israeli jails.

Oct. 13: PLO and Israeli delegates met in Taba, Egypt to begin negotiations for the transfer to Palestinian self-rule in Jericho and the Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, on a state visit to China, acknowledged Israeli weapons sales to Beijing, but said the amount of the sales was lower than CIA estimates and insisted they did not violate restrictions on the transfer of U.S. weapons technology.

U.S. forces were ordered to cease all offensive actions against Somali clan leader Mohamed Farah Aidid.

Oct. 14: The Senate voted to continue funding U.S. peacekeeping operations in Somalia through March 31 but to cut off funding if the deadline for withdrawal is not met. In Mogadishu, Gen. Mohamed Farah Aidid announced the release of captured U.S. pilot Michael Durant and Nigerian Pvt. Umar Shantali.

Oct. 16: Bosnian Serb forces resumed heavy shelling of Sarajevo after a lull of several weeks and a week after their leader, Radovan Karadzic, said no new attacks would be made on the capital or other Bosnian government strongholds.

Oct. 17: Multilateral Mideast peace talks scheduled to resume in Washington in late October were postponed because of Syria's refusal to participate until "the Israelis show they are serious in achieving results.''

Oct. 19: Pakistan's National Assembly elected Benazir Bhutto prime minister by a vote of 121-72.

President Clinton ordered the withdrawal of U.S. Army Rangers from Somalia.

Israel freed Salim Hussein Zerai, its longest held Palestinian prisoner, who had served 23 years of a life sentence for attacks on Israeli soldiers and Palestinian collaborators.

Oct. 20: PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat flew from Tunis, where he had been meeting with U.S. officials Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, to meet with nine American Jewish Congress trustees visiting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo to try to end the secondary boycott of firms doing business with Israel.

Newly elected Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said her country would continue to pursue its nuclear program.

Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic dissolved parliament to avoid a no-confidence vote and scheduled elections for Dec. 19.

Oct. 21: The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles charging the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B'nai B'rith with illegally spying on 10,000 Americans.

Asad Saftawi, a Fatah founder and longtime friend of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, was assassinated in Gaza. His murder was denounced by Hamas.

An Oct. 24 Arab League meeting to discuss expanding the boycott against Israel was "postponed indefinitely" following intensive lobbying by the U.S. and the PLO, which feared a freeze on U.S. aid.

Oct. 22: Indian paramilitary police opened fired on marchers supporting an estimated 200 Kashmiri separatists barricaded since Oct. 15 inside Srinagar's Hazratbal Mosque, Kashmir's holiest Muslim shrine. At least 34 people were killed in Bijbehara, 13 in Srinigar, and 200 injured in clashes throughout the state.

U.N. secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali made an unannounced visit to Somalia, where word of his arrival sparked renewed street demonstrations in Mogadishu.

In Belgrade, Muslim leader Fikret Abdic of Bosnia's breakaway Bihac region signed an agreement with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic for a "final peace" between Bihac and adjacent Serb-held territory.

Israel announced it would ease seven-month old travel restrictions and allow Palestinian women, men over 40 and children under 16 accompanied by an adult, as well as doctors and Jerusalem municipal employees, to enter Israel and Jerusalem from the occupied territories.

Reports from Western intelligence and Libyan opposition leaders indicated that, within the last 10 days, an attempted coup by Libyan army units had been crushed by Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi.

Oct. 23: U.N. Undersecretary-General for Peace-Keeping Operations Kofi Annan said the U.S. decision to withdraw its troops from Somalia by March 31 was undermining the U.N. mission there.

Oct. 24: Two Israeli soldiers hitchhiking in the Gaza Strip were kidnapped and killed by Hamas militants.

Oct. 25: Israel freed nearly 700 Palestinian women, elderly men, and teenagers detained for stone-throwing or graffiti-writing. Those released represent 5 percent of the estimated 13,400 Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons and detention centers.

Rival Somali clan members clashed in Mogadishu, leaving 3 dead and 45 wounded.

Oct. 26: A General Accounting Office report submitted to the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee disputed testimony by Robert F. Daniell, chairman and chief executive of United Technologies Corp., that its Pratt and Whitney company was "an unwitting participant" in the diversion of up to $70 million in U.S. defense funds by Israeli General Rami Dotan.

Ambassador Richard Bogosian was named the new U.S. special envoy to Somalia, replacing Robert Gosende, identified with the aggressive anti-Aidid policy now discarded by the Clinton administration.

Three people, including two Americans, were killed and at least five wounded when a "deranged" Egyptian gunman opened fire in the restaurant of a luxury hotel in Cairo.

Oct. 28: The trial of reputed Iranian secret police agent Kazem Darabi and four alleged accomplices accused of murdering Sadegh Sharafkandi, secretary-general of the Iranian Democratic Party of Kurdistan, opened in Berlin.

The Saudi government reached an agreement with its Shi'i opponents whereby the latter would cease their activities abroad, including publications attacking Saudi policies, in return for being allowed to return home safely and for the release from prison and issuance of passports to other members of the group.

Oct. 29: Following Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's visit to Washington, Egyptian-born American Samy Wassef was released from Egyptian prison five years after having been convicted of espionage.

Oct. 31: International relief workers and Azeri refugees said Armenian troops burned villages and captured the major town of Zangelan in the highlands of southwestern Azerbaijan, sending tens of thousands of refugees into Iran.

Algerian security forces rescued three French diplomats held hostage for a week by the Islamic Armed Group, who also had claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of two French map surveyors and three foreign oil workers, all found dead by Algerian authorities.

Nov. 2: Right-wing Likud candidate Ehud Olmert was elected mayor of Jerusalem, defeating Teddy Kollek, the city's mayor for 28 years.

PLO negotiators broke off talks with Israel over a disagreement on Israel's plans for repositioning its troops in the occupied territories.

Nov. 3: The U.S., France and Britain warned Russian President Boris Yeltsin that relations between their countries would suffer if Moscow continues to block new U.N. Security Council sanctions against Libya.

Nov. 4: The PLO announced that Tunisian authorities had arrested Adnan Yassin, an aide to PLO security chief Hakkam Balaawi, and his son Hani on charges of spying for Mossad. The elder Yassin, who admitted being recruited by Mossad in 1991, was responsible for the security of PLO leaders traveling abroad. Former PLO security chief Atef Bessesous was assassinated in Paris less than a year ago.

Fearing reprisal, an estimated 15,000 Croatian residents fled as Bosnian government troops captured the town of Vares, headquarters of the Bobovac Brigade, believed responsible for a recent massacre of Muslims in Stupni Do.

Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller warned that if neighboring Syria, Iran, Iraq and Armenia do not crack down on Kurdish rebels, "we will do what we have to do."

Algerian militants warned all foreigners to leave the country by Dec. 1 or risk "sudden death. "

U.S. special envoy to Somalia Ambassador Robert Oakley said American troops would resume visible activities "of a peaceful nature" in Mogadishu.

Nov. 5: The U.S. warned Libya it might face a global oil boycott if it refused to turn over two suspects in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Nov. 7: Following a week of mediation by Egypt, Israel and the PLO agreed to resume negotiations on Palestinian self-rule.

Somali clan leader Aidid warned the U.S. to restrict its troops to their barracks or risk "another bloody confrontation."

Nov. 8: In national elections, Jordanian voters elected moderate candidates and the country's first woman member. Islamist parties won only 18 seats in the 80-member parliament.

Serbian authorities arrested 18 leaders of the right-wing Chetnik Movement for crimes committed in Serbia.

Nov. 9: French authorities arrested 88 suspected members or sympathizers of Algeria's Islamic Salvation Front living in France.

Nov. 10: The Pentagon reversed its stand and conceded that some allied troops were exposed to chemical weapons during the Gulf war, but said it was not enough to account for the illnesses experienced by hundreds of U.S. veterans.

Nov. 11: The U.N. Security Council voted to tighten economic sanctions against Libya.

Two defendants in the World Trade Center bombing attempted suicide in their prison cells. Ahmad Ajaj and Bilal Alkaisi, along with several other defendants, had also been on a hunger strike to protest prison conditions, which include 23 hours a day of solitary confinement and restrictions on group prayer.

Nov. 12: Following a 90-minute meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, President Clinton demanded that the PLO condemn recent acts of violence against Israeli Jews and indicated that he would consider granting a pardon to Jonathan Jay Pollard, convicted of spying on the U.S. for Israel.

Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Granic met in Sarajevo with Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic to attempt to reach a peace agreement between Croats and Muslims.

Nov. 13: PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat condemned the killing of an Israeli settler and called for an end to violence.

Farooq Leghari was elected president of Pakistan by the country's two legislative houses and four provincial legislatures. Leghari, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's candidate for president, defeated acting president Wasim Sajjad, the candidate of Bhutto rival and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Nov. 15: The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith reached a settlement whereby the San Francisco district attorney's office dropped its criminal investigation into ADL spying activities, while the ADL admitted no wrongdoing but agreed not to use illegal means to monitor the activities of individuals and organizations.

The U.S. offered to sell Israel upgraded F-15 fighter jets, the most sophisticated ever sold by the U.S. In a letter to Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad, President Clinton said that both Washington and Jerusalem supported a comprehensive Middle East peace.

A senior aide to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, Lt. Col. Moueen Shabaita, was assassinated while being driven from his office in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein El-Hilweh in southern Lebanon.

Two Western journalists, one an AP reporter, were released by Afghan guerrillas after a week of captivity.

Nov. 16: The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to call off the search for Somali clan leader Gen. Mohamed Farah Aidid and to initiate a new inquiry on attacks on U.N. peacekeepers in Somalia.

As Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said Israel was willing to resume negotiations with Syria, which he accused of not supporting Middle East peace efforts, the Israeli army warned settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that it would act "firmly and aggressively" to halt settler disturbances.

Nov. 17: The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati revoked a 1986 extradition order against John Demjanjuk, acquitted in Israel of being the Treblinka death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible." The court also accused the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations of fraud and prosecutorial misconduct, criticizing the OSI's relationships with special-interest groups, particularly the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.

The war crimes tribunal to investigate crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia opened in The Hague.

In negotiations with the PLO, Israel agreed to restrict its troops in the occupied territories to Jewish settlements.

Nov. 18: After five months as a fugitive, Somali Gen. Mohamed Aidid addressed a rally of thousands of his followers in Mogadishu after meeting with U.S. special envoy Robert Oakley.

Meeting for the first time in two months in Geneva, the leaders of Bosnia's three warring factions agreed to allow U.N. aid convoys to pass freely throughout the country.

Nov. 19: The U.S. offered a $100 million aid package to Somalia if the rival factions agreed to make peace at an upcoming economic reconstruction conference in Addis Ababa.

Nov. 20: More than 500 Iraqi farmers crossed the newly demarcated border with Kuwait to protest a 16-foot-wide trench being dug by Kuwait to mark the new border, which put farm land cultivated by Iraqis, 11 oil wells and an abandoned Iraqi naval base inside Kuwait.

Nov. 21: Leaders of Jewish settlers in the occupied territories said they would not obey Palestinian police authorities under the autonomy plan.

OPEC oil ministers met in Vienna to try to bring a halt to falling oil prices.

Nov. 22: European foreign ministers presented a peace plan for Bosnia and Croatia and reaffirmed their commitment to provide relief aid to Bosnia. In Tuzla, Bosnian Serbs prevented two U.N. aid convoys from delivering supplies to U.N. troops and Bosnian civilians.

The U.N. said it could find no "immediate evidence" that Iraq had used poison gas against Shi'i dissidents in the country's southern marshes.

Nov. 23: Israeli television aired a previously censored year-old interview with former head of military intelligence Aharon Yariv, who said that, as counterterrorism adviser to the late Prime Minister Golda Meir, he supervised the assassinations of 10 to 15 leaders of the Palestinian Black September Movement responsible for the kidnapping of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

The Clinton administration proposed replacing the 1985 Pressler amendment, which bans military aid to Pakistan because of that country's nuclear program and grants no power to the president to waive the prohibition in the national interest Proposed legislation would allow the president to exempt any country from the ban. Nov. 24: In the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops shot and killed 21-year-old Hamas military commander Imad Aqal.

At the White House, President Clinton met with Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie. C] Jordan's King Hussein met in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, formally ending the rift between the two countries over their response to the Gulf war.

For the first time in more than a month, U.N. aid convoys were allowed to deliver supplies to besieged towns in central Bosnia.

In voting for student council members at Bir Zeit University in the occupied West Bank, a coalition of leftist and Islamist candidates defeated mainstream Fatah supporters.

OPEC oil ministers meeting in Vienna decided not to cut oil production.

Nov. 25: Israeli Rabbi Avraham Toledano, affiliated with the right-wing Kach movement, was arrested at Ben-Gurion Airport for attempting to smuggle bomb-making materials from the U.S. into Israel. In the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops shot and wounded 37 Palestinians protesting the killing of Hamas leader Imad Aqal.

A car bomb killed a schoolgirl and injured 18 people in an assassination attempt on Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Sedki, who survived the attack.

Nov. 26: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said Israel may not meet the Dec. 13 deadline for withdrawal from Jericho and the Gaza Strip. In East Jerusalem, Israeli police killed a second Hamas leader, Khaled Zeer, when he allegedly tried to escape custody.

American diplomat Haynes Mahoney was abducted in San'a by members of a Yemeni tribe in a dispute with the government.

Oil prices dropped to their lowest level in five years.

Iraq agreed to allow U.N. monitoring of its industries on a long-term basis.

Nov. 28: Fatah activist Ahmed Abu Rish, who had turned himself in under an Israeli offer of amnesty, was killed by Israeli soldiers in an ambush aimed at two other guerrillas.

Nov. 29: Bosnian peace talks resumed in Geneva.

Somali clan leader Mohamed Farah Aidid boycotted a U.N.-sponsored humanitarian conference being held in Addis Ababa.

Kidnapped U.S. diplomat Haynes Mahoney was freed in Yemen.

Nov. 30: Following a day of protests in the Gaza Strip in which Israeli soldiers killed a 15-year-old Palestinian and wounded 80 others, Israeli authorities agreed to limit their searches for Palestinian activists in return for Palestinian efforts to restore a cease-fire.

President Clinton said he "meant no disrespect" to Muslims by meeting with author Salman Rushdie.

U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, addressing the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, said the U.S. was prepared to deliver additional relief supplies to Bosnia, but did not mention earlier pledges to take military action on behalf of the besieged republic.

Citing the former U.S. defense secretary's age and ill health, New York State Supreme Court Justice John Bradley dropped all criminal charges against Clark Clifford in conjunction with the BCCI banking scandal.