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

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 2000, Pages 100-103

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

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Nov. 1, 1999: In Oslo to attend a memorial service for assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, President Bill Clinton met with current Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to urge increased efforts toward a final settlement.

In a compromise agreement, Israeli rabbis and the country’s tourism industry announced that Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve celebrations, which fall on Fridays, the Jewish Sabbath, would be permitted in “closed-off hotel halls.”
In its first major test, Israel’s new U.S.-funded Arrow II anti-ballistic missile successfully intercepted and destroyed a dummy rocket over the Mediterranean.
Fearing it would be blamed if Serbs froze to death, the U.S. abandoned its opposition to a European program to provide heating oil to Yugoslavia.

Nov. 3: Appearing with political opponents of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said the U.S. would lift sanctions on Serbia if free elections were held there.

In a speech marking the 20th anniversary of the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attacked the U.S. and “a small but active minority” of Iranians he called traitors for favoring improved relations with Washington.
As U.S. jets bombed air-defense sites in Iraq’s northern “no-fly” zone, Iraqi Foreign Minister Muhammad Said al-Sahaf said Baghdad would reject any U.N. proposal to suspend economic sanctions in return for Iraq’s acceptance of a new weapons-inspection program.
Iranian opposition forces based in southern Iraq suffered heavy casualties, including 7 dead and 78 wounded, in an explosion they charged was caused by a missile fired from Iran.
Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil said Afghanistan’s ruling Islamist militia would never hand over Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden for trial in the U.S. on charges of terrorism.
At least seven people were killed in rocket attacks on the Indian army headquarters in Kashmir’s summer capital of Srinagar.
Reversing an October board decision, the Jordanian Press Association announced it would not expel three members who had visited Israel in September.

Nov. 4: The U.S. was reported to be “furious” with Israel for having allowed the Yugoslav government to use Israel’s Amos-1 satellite for television broadcasts.

An Iraqi military spokesman said U.S. and British planes flew 56 sorties over its “no-fly” zones, bringing the total to 15,031 since December 1998.
A week after establishing diplomatic ties with Israel, Mauritania broke off relations with Iraq, accusing Baghdad of planning retaliatory subversion.

Nov. 5: Saying Washington would not honor its offer if President Milosevic were re-elected, Yugoslavia rejected the recent U.S. proposal for a lifting of economic sanctions if free elections were held.

Fearing possible election violence in Bosnia, NATO announced a delay in planned troop reductions in Bosnia until after April 2000 municipal elections.

Nov. 6: Israeli Prime Minister Barak extended for a second time the deadline for the evacuations of 12 of 42 rogue illegal West Bank settlements.

An explosion on a railway bridge in the divided Kosovar city of Kosovska Mitrovica injured five NATO peacekeepers and halted a passenger train carrying 400 Serbs.

Nov. 7: A day before the convening of the final round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, three pipe bombs exploded simultaneously in the coastal town of Netanya, injuring 27 Israelis.

As Russian shelling and bombing of the Chechen capital of Grozny intensified, President Aslan Maskhadov appealed to U.S. President Clinton to help stop Russia’s “genocide of the Chechen people.”
Incumbent Tajikistan President Imamali Rakhmonov was declared the overwhelming victor of a presidential election described as rigged by devoutly Islamic challenger Davlat Usmon.

Nov. 8: Israeli-Palestinian negotiations aimed at establishing by mid-February a framework for a permanent peace opened in Ramallah.

In a General Assembly speech, Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, outgoing president of the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, charged Serbia and the Bosnian Serb enclave with obstructing the court’s work and harboring indicted war criminals, and the U.N. Security Council with lacking the will to enforce Serb compliance.

Nov. 9: Israeli police and soldiers began forcibly evacuating some 150 Jewish settlers and supporters from Havat Maon, one of 12 rogue outposts ordered dismantled by Israeli Prime Minister Barak.

Israel acknowledged it was outfitting a Soviet-made Chinese air force plane with an advanced airborne early warning system.
India claimed it had killed 10 Pakistani soldiers in fighting in Kashmir.
Some four months after his father King Hassan’s death, Moroccan King Muhammad dismissed powerful Interior Minister Driss Basri.
U.S. warplanes attacked targets in northern Iraq for the second straight day.
Five Kurdish rebels who had surrendered to Turkish authorities were charged with supporting terrorism.

Nov. 10: By a 17-1 vote, the Israeli cabinet approved a troop withdrawal from 2 percent of the West Bank currently under joint Palestinian-Israeli control and the transfer of 3 percent of West Bank land to Palestinian civil control, with Israel retaining control over security.

Israeli soldiers and police officers evicted the last settlers from the outpost of a new illegal West Bank settlement of Maon Farm.
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was charged with hijacking and kidnapping for having denied landing permission to a commercial jet carrying Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who subsequently ousted Sharif.
Chief investigator Carla del Ponte told the U.N. Security Council that, in five months of work, international war crimes investigators had unearthed 2,108 bodies from 195 Kosovo grave sites.

Nov. 11: First lady and probable New York Senate candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared in Ramallah with Palestinian first lady Suha Arafat, who accused Israel of using toxic weapons against Palestinian children and contaminating Palestinian air and water.

In Tehran, a hard-line jury convicted moderate cleric and publisher Abdullah Nouri of political and religious dissent.
Fighting continued in Kashmir, killing seven Indian soldiers and nine Muslim separatists.
U.S. and British warplanes attacked targets in Iraq’s southern “no-fly” zone.

Nov. 12: In a coordinated attack, six rockets were launched at U.S. and U.N. offices in Islamabad, injuring several people including a Pakistani guard at the American Cultural Center.

More than 700 people died when an earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale struck northwest Turkey, the country’s second major quake in three months.

Nov. 14: The day before its scheduled implementation, Israel delayed its planned withdrawal from 5 percent of the West Bank over Palestinian objections to the thinly populated areas involved and to the continued construction of illegal Jewish settlements.

U.N. offices in Kabul were attacked as tens of thousands of demonstrators protested new U.N. sanctions against Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militia for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden on terrorism charges.
Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders agreed to begin U.N.-sponsored “proximity talks” Dec. 3 in New York.
In Macedonia’s first presidential ballot since seceding from Yugoslavia, moderate Boris Trajkovsky was elected successor to retiring President Kiro Gligorov.
Risking U.S. sanctions, Royal Dutch/ Shell agreed to spend $800 million to develop two Iranian offshore oil fields.

Nov. 15: During a five-day visit to Turkey, President Clinton praised Ankara’s democratic progress while urging it to improve its human rights record.

U.S. Mideast envoy Dennis Ross met separately with Israeli Prime Minister Barak and Palestinian President Arafat to try and break the deadlock over Israel’s latest troop withdrawal from the West Bank.
President Boris Yeltsin rejected Western pressure to end Russia’s military campaign against Chechnya.

Nov. 17: Pakistan’s new military government arrested 26 of the country’s wealthiest and most powerful people on charges of tax evasion, defaulting on loans, and corruption.

Nov. 18: At a ceremony in Istanbul, the presidents of Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan agreed to support the building of a pipeline to carry Caspian oil from Baku to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, thus bypassing Russia and Iran.

Unable to reach an agreement on a new policy on Iraq, the U.N. Security Council approved a stopgap two-week extension of its oil-for-food program. Meanwhile, an aircraft carrier-based U.S. jet attacked a radar site near Basra in southern Iraq.

Nov. 19: The cabinet of Palestinian President Arafat issued a statement saying there would be no peace agreement with Israel “if Jerusalem is not accepted as the capital of an independent state.”

Appearing in public for the first time in five weeks, ousted Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told a Karachi judge he was innocent of any wrongdoing.

Nov. 21: Israeli Prime Minister Barak, appearing before the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, described Hillary Clinton’s recent trip to the Middle East as a “highly successful” one which “contributed to the peace process in spite of” her delayed denunciation of Suha Arafat’s remarks.

Jordan’s King Abdullah freed and then expelled Khaled Meshal and three other Hamas leaders. Some 20 more Hamas members were expected to be freed and allowed to remain in Jordan, although Hamas offices will not be permitted to reopen.
Militant supporters of ousted Pakistani Prime Minister Sharif claimed responsibility for the previous day’s bomb explosion in Lahore which killed six people.

Nov. 22: Churches in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth closed their doors in a two-day protest against Israel’s approval of construction of a mosque beside the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth.

Iraq cut off its oil exports allowed under the oil-for-food program to protest the U.N. Security Council’s two-week extension of the program rather than its usual six-month renewal. In Baghdad, officials said 10 people in the southern “no-fly” zone were injured in attacks by U.S. warplanes, which also bombed northern targets.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran had rejected U.S. proposals to open a diplomatic interests section in Tehran.
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika denounced as “criminal” the murder of Abdelkader Hachani, a leader of the banned militant Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) who had called for peace and reconciliation with the government.

Nov. 23: Speaking in Kosovo, President Clinton urged ethnic Albanians to try to “forgive what was done to you.”

As the Vatican criticized Israel’s decision in the matter as likely to “foment division,” Muslim Nazarenes laid the marble cornerstone for a mosque alongside the Basilica of the Annunciation.
Kuwait’s male-only parliament rejected Emir Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah’s edict, issued while parliament was out of session, giving women the right to vote and run for office.

Nov. 24: The Israel state attorney’s office released 1,200 pages of censored testimony in the 1987 trial of Mordechai Vanunu, who exposed Israel’s nuclear weapons program to the London Sunday Times.

Serbian customs officials impounded 14 fuel trucks carrying EU-donated heating oil.

Nov. 25: Israel announced plans to build a road linking Jerusalem to the West Bank, confiscating Palestinian land and destroying non-Jewish homes built without permits to do so.

A Turkish appeals court upheld the death sentence of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Iranian intelligence agents arrested members of the radical Shi’i group Mahdaviyat for plotting to assassinate President Mohammad Khatami and other top officials.
A truck carrying rockets exploded near an Iraqi base of the opposition People’s Mojahedin of Iran, which accused Tehran of planning to attack it.

Nov. 27: Iran’s highest clerical court sentenced publisher Abdullah Nouri to a five-year prison term and a five-year ban on political activity, and ordered the closing of his moderate newspaper, Khordad.

In a clash in Tunceli province, Turkish troops killed Kurdish guerrilla leader Haydar Alparslan, who had vowed to continue to fight for Kurdish independence despite imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan’s call for a peaceful settlement.

Nov. 28: Palestinian security placed two people under house arrest and arrested five others who were among 20 leading intellectuals who signed a statement criticizing President Arafat’s government for “tyranny, corruption and injustice.”

Iraq said U.S. and British warplanes bombed a primary school, injuring eight people, including three children, during attacks on the northern city of Mosul.

Nov. 29: The U.S. released Egyptian-born Nasser Ahmed after holding him for more than three years on secret evidence.

Palestinian police arrested three more signers of a statement criticizing the Arafat government.
International authorities dismissed 22 Bosnian officials, including Muslims, Serbs and Croats, for obstructing the 1995 Dayton peace accord and hindering the return of refugees.

Nov. 30: Ignoring international criticism of its offensive, Russia attacked the Chechen capital of Grozny with bombs and rockets.

Dec. 1: Dr. Muawiya Masri, a physician member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and one of 20 signers of a statement criticizing the government of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, was shot and wounded in Nablus by masked gunmen. The shooting took place after a four-hour PLC session in which the nine members who signed the statement were censured but not stripped of their immunity, and critics of the government said they had not intended to offend Arafat.

In a visit which was to include a meeting with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema became the first head of a Western government to visit Tripoli since U.N. sanctions were lifted in April.

Dec. 2: Documents linked to the Iran-contra scandal were seized from the Jerusalem office of Yaakov Nimrodi, acting publisher of the Israeli daily newspaper Ma’ariv and a one-time arms dealer who was one of three Israeli middlemen in the arms-for-hostage deal.

On the eve of U.N.-sponsored peace talks, Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash threatened to walk out of the talks if the European Union admits Cyprus as a member during its upcoming summit in Helsinki.
In a joint statement with Italian Prime Minister D’Alema, Libyan leader Qaddafi promised to deny “sustenance and protection to those responsible for terrorist acts.”

Dec. 3: As President Arafat said there was “no progress” in the peace talks with Israel, hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated in Nablus in support of PNC member Muawiya Masri, wounded in a gun attack.

Cypriot President Glafcos Clerides and Turkish Cypriot leader Denktash opened indirect talks in New York through the auspices of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Still unable to reach a consensus on a new policy, the U.N. Security Council extended Iraq’s oil-for-food program for one week.
State Department spokesman James Rubin said Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden’s organization was maintaining links with Islamic rebels in the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya.
Six Iranian scholars invited to attend a conference at Georgetown University returned to Tehran, saying U.S. customs officials at Kennedy Airport in New York harassed and humiliated them.

Dec. 4: Palestinian President Arafat lighted a Christmas tree in Manger Square to inaugurate Bethlehem 2000 celebrations.

Dec. 5: The Israeli group Peace Now said that, since taking office in July, Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s Labor government had approved the construction of 3,196 illegal settlement houses, more than double the average of 3,000 per year under his Likud predecessor, Binyamin Netanyahu.

Dec. 6: On the eve of a visit by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Palestinian negotiators stated they would not proceed with peace talks until Israel halts all illegal settlement construction.

Russian planes dropped leaflets on the Chechen capital of Grozny warning residents to flee the city within five days or risk death.
As Iraq protested the latest military incursion by Turkish troops pursuing Kurdish rebels, U.S. warplanes attacked an anti-aircraft battery and radar station southeast of Baghdad.
After being detained at the Yugoslav border for almost two weeks, trucks carrying donated EU fuel arrived in Nis, controlled by opponents of President Slobodan Milosevic.
NATO peacekeeping troops backing up a U.N. investigation into the July 1995 killings of up to 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica confiscated weapons from a Bosnian Serb army warehouse near Tuzla.

Dec. 7: After meeting in Damascus with President Hafez al-Assad, Secretary of State Albright said she was “much more hopeful” about a resumption of Syrian-Israeli peace talks. In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Barak, while not halting construction already underway, said that no new illegal settlements would be built before a final Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is reached.

Foreign Minister George Papandreou said Greece would veto Turkey’s application for EU membership at the upcoming EU summit in Helsinki if Ankara did not accept Greek demands on Cyprus and Aegean oil.
The Islamist government of Sudan pardoned and freed two Roman Catholic clerics who were among at least 20 charged with setting off bombs in Khartoum on June 30, 1998, the ninth anniversary of the coup that brought the National Islamic Front to power.

Dec. 8: President Clinton announced that Syria and Israel would resume peace talks the following week near Washington, DC.

Pakistani prosecutors formally charged ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and six others with hijacking, kidnapping, attempted murder and plotting to wage war against the state, charges which could result in the death penalty.
Iraq announced it had evicted more than 4,000 families who had fled to Baghdad from their southern towns during the 1991 Gulf war.
Sudan and Uganda, in a surprise move, signed a peace agreement restoring diplomatic relations between the two neighbors.
In a pretrial session in The Hague, Scottish Judge Lord Ronald Sutherland granted a postponement from Feb. 2 to May 3 of the trial of the two Libyan suspects in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 but denied a motion that conspiracy charges be dropped.

Dec. 9: A State Department report estimated that some 10,000 Kosovar Albanians had been killed in Serbian ethnic cleansing, with more than 1.5 million Albanians expelled from their homes and more than 2,000 in custody in Serbian detention camps. Following the NATO bombing campaign and the Serbian military withdrawal from Kosovo, the report found that 200 to 400 Kosovar Serbs had been killed, thousands of Serbian homes looted or destroyed, and more than 40 Orthodox churches and monasteries damaged or destroyed.

A Serbian court imposed a 12-year prison sentence on Flora Brovina, Kosovo’s leading poet and a noted women’s rights activist who was arrested in Pristina during the NATO bombing campaign on charges of aiding the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Russia vowed to return Chechen refugees who had fled their homes for the neighboring republic of Ingushetia.

Dec. 10: Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, the former Communist general who engineered his country’s secession from Yugoslavia, died in Zagreb of stomach cancer.

Reversing its 1997 decision, the European Union voted to allow Turkey to apply for membership.
After weeks of diplomatic maneuvering, the U.N. Security Council approved an 180-day extension of Iraq’s oil-for-food program.
The Vatican announced that, due to the U.N. trade embargo and “no-fly” zones, Iraq had been unable to arrange a visit by Pope John Paul II.

Dec. 11: Javier Solana, the EU’s high commissioner for foreign affairs and security, said Turkey’s application for membership would be denied if it executed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Dec. 12: Speaking in New York to the American Jewish Committee, Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for closer relations between the U.N. and the Jewish community.

Iraqi officials said U.S. warplanes bombed a residential area in northern Iraq, killing two children and injuring six people.
In his first major speech since the jailing of his ally Abdullah Nouri, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami defended his moderate policies.
Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir, increasingly at odds with parliamentary speaker Hassan Turabi, dissolved the national legislature and declared a three-month state of emergency.

Dec. 13: With a third of his coalition members abstaining, Israeli Prime Minister Barak won Knesset approval of renewed negotiations with Syria.

In a raid near Hebron, Israeli commandos killed two Hamas members allegedly preparing a bomb attack.
As Russian troops clashed with Chechen rebels on the eastern outskirts of Grozny, refugees fled the capital along a safety corridor to the west.
In the harshest sentence handed down so far, the International War Crimes Tribunal sentenced to 40 years in prison Bosnian Serb Goran Jelisic, who had been a shift commander at the Luka prison camp in northern Bosnia.

Dec. 14: U.S. officials said 13 people with ties to Osama bin Laden and suspected of planning year-end terrorist attacks had been arrested in Jordan, prompting a State Department travel advisory warning Americans abroad to avoid large gatherings.

Jailed reformist cleric Abdullah Nouri filed to run as a candidate in Iran’s February parliamentary elections.

Dec. 15: After a four-year hiatus, Israeli Prime Minister Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Charaa reopened negotiations at the White House with President Clinton.

Baghdad refused to admit inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency for a yearly check of Iraq’s uranium stockpile.
The U.N. agreed to include three ethnic Albanian leaders in the official administration of Kosovo. Kosovar Serb leaders declined to fill a fourth position reserved for a Serb representative.

Dec. 16: In a White House meeting, Israeli and Syrian leaders agreed to begin intensive negotiations in early January.

In southern Lebanon, Israeli and SLA artillery shells struck a school in Arab Salim, wounding 20 children aged 9 to 15. The Israeli army later called the attack “a mistake.”
Refugees fleeing the Chechen capital of Grozny said they had come under fire in the “safe corridor” established by the Russian army.

Dec. 17: Meeting in Berlin, G-7 foreign ministers criticized Russia’s offensive in Chechnya but, acceding to U.S. pressure, did not threaten sanctions should Moscow flout their concerns.

With Russia, France and China abstaining, the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution establishing a new Iraqi weapons inspection program and the suspending of trade sanctions if Baghdad cooperates.
Two American peacekeeping soldiers in Kosovo were seriously injured while trying to break up a brawl between ethnic Albanians and Serbs in the capital of Pristina.
Serbia’s opposition Alliance for Change, in the face of dwindling turnouts, said it would end 89 days of “Milosevic Must Go” protests in Belgrade.
U.S. border agents arrested an Algerian man entering Washington state from Canada and allegedly carrying nitroglycerin and other bomb-making equipment in his car.

Dec. 18: Iraq formally rejected the U.N. Security Council’s new weapons inspection program.

Dec. 19: U.S. officials said senior Israeli Defense Ministry official Moshe Kochnovsky had met the previous week with White House counsel Beth Nolan to urge the release of convicted spy Jonathan Jay Pollard.

Reporting to his cabinet, Prime Minister Barak said Israel would seek a “core agreement” in upcoming negotiations with Syria.
Lawyers for members of Israel’s proxy South Lebanon Army petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court to grant refuge to SLA members who, attorney Zvi Rish argued, “will be slaughtered” following an Israeli withdrawal from occupied southern Lebanon.
Palestinian President Arafat freed 6 of the 11 jailed signers of a statement critical of his government. The remaining 9 of the 20 signatories, as members of the legislature, were immune from imprisonment.
National Security Adviser Samuel Berger urged Americans to “be vigilant” during New Year’s celebrations.

Dec. 20: Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Charaa said any treaty his country would sign with Israel must include Lebanon.

In a letter from prison published in Iranian newspapers, Abdullah Nouri criticized supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the chanting of anti-American slogans.

Dec. 21: Israeli Prime Minister Barak and Palestinian President Arafat held a three-hour summit meeting in Ramallah.

Former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a candidate for parliament in upcoming elections, expressed his support for jailed cleric Abdullah Nouri and other moderates.
Serbia’s parliament fired Judge Slobodan Vucetic, a harsh critic of the Milosevic government.

Dec. 22: Israeli Prime Minister Barak announced that Egypt will provide natural gas to Israel through a “peace pipeline” across the Sinai Desert.

Dec. 24: Native Palestinian Christians and pilgrims from around the world celebrated the millennial Christmas Eve in Bethlehem.

Dec. 25: An Indian Airlines passenger plane was hijacked en route from Katmandu, Nepal to New Delhi, with hijackers demanding that India release Maulana Mansood Azhar, a leader of Kashmir’s independence organization Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, and other jailed militants.

Russian troops launched a major assault on the Chechen capital of Grozny.
For a second straight day, Israeli warplanes attacked targets in southern Lebanon following Hezbollah and Amal strikes on Israeli and SLA outposts in the occupation zone.

Dec. 26: Israel released five Lebanese members of Hezbollah whom it had jailed without charges and held as bargaining chips for some 10 years.

Russia acknowledged that it was meeting stiff resistance to its assault on Grozny.
Turkish troops clashed with Kurdish rebels in southeastern Sirnak province, the second clash in a month following rebel warnings that they might resume their independence struggle if Ankara kept dismissing their appeals for peace.

Dec. 27: Israeli officials said the U.N.’s Gulf War compensation commission had awarded nearly $7 million to El Al because the national airline had had to move its entire fleet out of Israel to avoid Iraqi attacks.

Jewish vendors of religious souvenirs picketed near the Vatican to protest Rome’s ban on street stalls from Christmas Eve to Jan. 9, calling the ban anti-Semitic.
Russian troops reported encountering unexpectedly stiff resistance in the Chechen capital of Grozny and its outskirts.
Pakistan launched a second crackdown on corruption, ordering the arrest of some 33 politicians and bureaucrats.
The U.N. General Assembly approved the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism.

Dec. 28: Israel turned over the bodies of two Hezbollah guerrillas killed during a Dec. 9 clash in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre.

For a second straight day, U.S. and British warplanes flew sorties over Iraq’s southern “no-fly” zone.

Dec. 29: Despite the resumption of negotiations with Syria, Israel approved new construction permits for more than 50 homes to be built in 2 of the 33 Jewish settlements on the Golan Heights.

Yielding to Palestinian objections that too few prisoners were being freed, and many of these were at the end of their sentences, Israel released 26 imprisoned Palestinians, including some who had killed Israelis or tourists.
In the illegal West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba the Israeli army razed the shrine to Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the American-born Jewish militant who murdered 29 Palestinians praying in Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque.
Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor for the U.N.’s International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, was said to be reviewing a staff report on NATO’s possible violations of international law during its seven-week bombing of Yugoslavia earlier in the year.

Dec. 30: An anti-terrorist task force stormed a Brooklyn apartment and arrested Abdel Ghani, an Algerian and alleged accomplice of Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian arrested earlier in the month as he tried to enter the U.S. from Canada with a van containing explosives. Police arrested other suspects in New York and Boston and questioned others nationwide about membership in the radical Algerian Armed Islamic Group.

Israel freed seven East Jerusalem Palestinians, bringing the total to 383 prisoners released since September, and removed more than 100 Jewish youth from a tent camp they had established on West Bank land slated to be transferred to the Palestinian Authority.
In southern Lebanon, a suicide bomber was killed and an Israeli soldier and 12 Lebanese civilians wounded when a truck driving in front of four Israeli army vehicles detonated the bomb it was carrying.
A Turkish chief prosecutor rejected Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan’s final appeal that his death sentence be overturned. Ocalan’s attorneys are also appealing his sentence to the European Court of Human Rights.

Dec. 31: The hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane ended after eight days when, in exchange for India’s release of Kashmiri independence activists Maulana Masood Azhar, Omar Sheikh and Mushtaq Zargat,155 passengers and crew members were released in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The hijackers were given 10 hours to leave the country by Taliban officials, who were thanked for their efforts by Pakistan and other countries whose citizens were among the hostages.

Christians, Muslims and Jews marked the arrival of a new millennium in peaceful celebrations in Bethlehem and Jerusalem.