Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 1998, Pages 119-122

Facts For Your Files:

Jan/Feb 1998 Chronology of U.S.-Middle East Relations

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Jan. 1, 1998: Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy, the most moderate member of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, threatened to quit if the government’s budget was passed in its current form.

 Rafiq Tarar, a former judge charged with openly criticizing the judiciary, was sworn in as president of Pakistan; if convicted of the charges at a Jan. 12 court hearing, he would be disqualified from his new position.

Jan. 2: Iran’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused the U.S. of attempting to destabilize the Islamic republic.

 A rocket-propelled grenade was fired at the Baghdad offices of U.N. weapons inspectors.

 As the first day of Ramadan ended, more than 400 people were massacred in separate attacks on four isolated villages in western Algeria.

Jan. 3: After attempts to reach a budget compromise ended in failure, Israeli Foreign Minister Levy announced his resignation.

Jan. 6: In preparation for White House meetings with President Bill Clinton later in the month, U.S. envoy Dennis Ross held separate meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who refused to discuss the extent of planned Israeli troop withdrawal from the West Bank, and with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who said Israel had “no more excuses” for delaying its promised withdrawal.

The Algerian government rejected calls by the European Union and the U.S. for an international investigation into the violence reported to have claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Algerians in the first week of Ramadan.

 The Smithsonian Institution, under pressure from Rep. Michael Forbes (R-NY) and several American Jewish organizations, cancelled its plans to co-sponsor with the New Israel Fund, criticized as too liberal and “left-wing,” a forthcoming lecture series on “Israel at 50: Yesterday’s Dreams, Today’s Realities.”

Following U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s approval of Baghdad’s distribution plan, Iraq announced it would resume as soon as possible oil sales, the proceeds of which are allocated to humanitarian supplies and war reparations.

Following two days of impromptu talks, the presidents of Turkmenistan, Kazakh stan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan agreed to increased economic and political cooperation to reduce their dependence on Moscow.

Jan. 7: In a televised interview on CNN, recently elected Iranian President Mohammad Khatami called for “dialogue and understanding” between the U.S. and Iran.

Israel approved the construction of 574 new housing units in the illegal West Bank Jewish settlement of Efrat.

In the eastern Mediterranean, Israel’s and Turkey’s navies, accompanied by a U.S. destroyer, carried out their first joint maneuvers, code-named “Reliant Mermaid.”

Jan. 8: As he was sentenced to life in solitary confinement for masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef condemned Israel and U.S. Mideast policy, telling Judge Kevin Duffy, “This is the only language you understand...This is what it takes to make you feel the pain which you are causing to other people.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu said his government would determine the extent of Israeli troop withdrawal from the West Bank prior to his Jan. 20 meeting with President Clinton, but would not implement the withdrawal for several months, after deciding whether or not the Palestinians are fulfilling their commitments.

Tatiana Suskin, the right-wing Israeli convicted of posting in Hebron drawings depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a pig, was sentenced to two years in prison.

Jan. 9: Hours after U.S. envoy Dennis Ross ended his latest Mideast peace mission without making any apparent progress, Palestinian Higher Education Minister Hanan Ashrawi criticized Ross’s failure “to affect any change in the Israeli attitude” and accusing him of trying to “justify holding the peace process hostage to domestic concerns in Israel.”

Jan. 10: In Hebron, Israeli troops fired rubber-coated steel bullets at hundreds of Palestinians protesting Israel’s announced expansion of illegal Jewish settlements.

Jan. 11: Iraq registered a strong complaint with the U.N. about the unbalanced composition of a weapons inspection team led by former U.S. Marine Scott Ritter and made up of nine Americans, five Britons and only two experts from other countries.

Jan. 12: Iraq announced it would block arms inspections by the team led by American Scott Ritter.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu survived a no-confidence motion in the Knesset which ended in a tie.

Thousands of Shi’i Muslims smashed cars, set fire to buildings and tried to storm parliament in Lahore, Pakistan in protest of the previous day’s massacre of 28 Muslims at prayer by the Warriors of Jhangvi, a secretive Sunni Muslim group vowing “not [to] spare Shi’i in Pakistan.”

Jan. 13: One week before a White House meeting with President Clinton at which Prime Minister Netanyahu was expected to present a detailed plan for the overdue Israeli troop withdrawal from the West Bank, the Israeli prime minister’s cabinet adopted a 12-page list of conditions, mostly security-related, it said Palestinians must meet before such a withdrawal takes place.

Jan. 14: The Israeli cabinet voted to keep under permanent Israeli control “security zones” on both sides of the West Bank, Jewish settlements, the area around Jerusalem, and West Bank water, electricity and transportation infrastructures.

Jan. 15: Palestinian leaders rejected Israeli conditions for the resumption of peace talks.

As Russia and France offered to contribute more experts to U.N. weapons inspection teams, the U.S.-led team blocked by Iraq from carrying out weapons inspections prepared to leave Baghdad.

Jan. 16: Turkey’s Constitutional Court banned the Islamist Welfare Party and ruled that former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan could not participate in politics for the next five years.

Officials of the tax-supported U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum turned down an overture initiated by board member and U.S. Mideast envoy Aaron David Miller for a visit by Palestinian President Arafat, who had accepted Miller’s proposal.

Iran’s supreme spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calling the U.S. “the enemy of the Islamic Republic,” ruled out any contact with Washington.

The Serbian-held enclave of Eastern Slavonia was officially returned to Croatian control.

Jan. 17: In a speech marking the seventh anniversary of the start of the Gulf war, Iraqi President Saddam Hussain threatened to expel all U.N. arms inspectors in six months if Baghdad is not cleared of suspicions about its weapons program and sanctions are not lifted.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Charaa called the Clinton administration “ineffective” as a Middle East peace arbiter for failing to “pinpoint the party that is violating the basis of the peace” and failing to apply pressure on Israel.

The Bosnian Serb parliament elected as prime minister moderate Milorad Dodik, nominated by pro-Western President Biljana Plavsic.

Leaders of Turkey’s newly banned Welfare Party vowed to “continue our mission under a new name and a new leader.”

Jan. 18: Saying “The burden of proof is on Saddam Hussain,” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright reiterated that “the use of military force [against Iraq] is still an option.”

The Israeli cabinet postponed any decision on the extent of troop withdrawal from the West Bank until after Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Jan. 20 meeting with U.S. President Clinton.

Jan. 19: The day before his meeting with President Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed a Washington rally of American Jews and evangelical Christians, including Rev. Jerry Falwell, who has been extremely critical of Clinton.

U.N. chief arms inspector Richard Butler, arriving in Baghdad for talks with Iraqi officials, rejected Saddam Hussain’s deadline for the completion of weapons inspections and again accused Iraq of concealing banned weapons material.

Defense Secretary William Cohen said in Beijing that he had received assurances that China would no longer sell anti-ship cruise missiles to Iran.

In a reversal of its position, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum said it was prepared to invite Palestinian President Arafat on an official visit to the tax-funded institution.

Jan. 20: As Israeli Prime Minister Netan yahu rejected during two White House meetings President Clinton’s suggestion that Israel undertake a phased withdrawal from the West Bank as a way to restart the peace process, Christian fundamentalist Rev. Jerry Falwell said he and other evangelical leaders would mobilize their churches to oppose any further Israeli withdrawal from the 97 percent of the West Bank still under the Jewish state’s control.

Chief U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler said he had been unable to persuade Iraqi officials to open up presidential palaces to arms monitors.

A three-member EU fact-finding delegation ended its one-day visit to Algeria without recommending measures to end the violence which claimed more than 1,100 people in the past three weeks alone.

Jan. 21: President Clinton said that time was running out on diplomatic efforts to open suspected Iraqi weapons sites and the U.S. had to be “prepared to move alone” with the use of military force.

Jan. 22: In the midst of a breaking scandal involving a former White House intern, President Clinton met with Palestinian President Arafat, who demanded that Israel honor its agreement for further withdrawals from the West Bank.

Calling the inspections “espionage not disarmament,” Iraq called for a freeze until April of U.N. arms monitoring.

U.S. peacekeeping troops in Bosnia made their first arrest of a suspected war criminal, former detention camp commander Goran Jelisic.

In its first official account of casualties, the Algerian government issued a report saying that since its 1992 cancellation of parliamentary elections 26,536 people had been killed and 21,000 more injured, figures about one-third smaller than media estimates of more than 75,000.

The U.S. ordered the deportation of Hani Abdel Rahim Sayegh, the Saudi dissident suspected of having information on the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers military residence in Dhahran.

Jan. 23: After two days of talks in Washington with President Clinton and administration officials, Palestinian President Arafat described the peace process as “completely frozen.”

In a report to the Security Council, chief weapons inspector Richard Butler said the U.N. may never learn the full extent of Iraq’s capacity for chemical, biological or nuclear warfare if Baghdad continues to deny access to suspected weapons sites.

Jan. 24: Mir Aimal Kasi, convicted of the 1993 shooting deaths of two CIA employees and the wounding of three other people, was sentenced to death by a Virginia court.

In an Israeli television interview, Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin called the Palestinian Authority’s “hounding” of Hamas members “an implementation of the orders and desires of the Americans and Israelis.”

Jan. 25: The U.S. was reported to be entering a final round of diplomacy over Iraq before embarking on a possible military attack.

A group of Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis proposed that the Israeli state recognize Reform and Conservative as well as Orthodox converts as Jews, but did not address the chief rabbinate’s refusal to marry or bury non-Orthodox Jews.

Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz disclosed the results of a seven-month official investigation which found that from 1993 to 1996 government-paid agents were involved in death squads targeting ethnic Kurds, as well as in drug trafficking, extortion and failed secret operations abroad.

Jan. 26: Russian President Boris Yeltsin sent Deputy Foreign Minister Viktor Posuvalyuk to Baghdad to mediate the crisis over Iraq’s challenge to U.N. weapons inspections.

The European Union called on the Algerian government to allow the U.N. and other international organizations to investigate fully the continuing massacres of civilians.

Jan. 28: Israeli Finance Minister Yaakov Neeman met with administration and congressional officials in Washington to outline a proposal for a phase out of Israel’s annual $1.2 billion in U.S. economic aid in exchange for a $600 million increase in its $1.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid.

France and Russia warned the U.S. against a military attack on Iraq.

Jan. 29: In an Eid message to Muslims around the world, President Clinton said he looked forward to improved relations with Iran and the Iranian people.

Jan. 30: After securing French agreement that “all options are open” with regard to the Iraqi weapons inspection crisis, Secretary of State Albright met at the Madrid airport with Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who urged greater U.S. patience in seeking a diplomatic solution.

Jan. 31: Secretary of Defense Cohen said Americans “shouldn’t overestimate” what a military strike on Iraq could accomplish, indicating that Saddam Hussain might still remain in power.

Feb. 1: After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced in Jerusalem that the two sides would send delegates to talks in Washington, DC, but expressed frustration at their unwillingness to make the “hard decisions necessary” to reach peace, terming as “hasty” President Arafat’s rejection of a limited Israeli withdrawal from only an additional 10 percent of the West Bank.

In the region to solicit support for a possible U.S. attack on Iraq, Secretary of State Albright met with Kuwaiti leaders and won their support. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia said it would not allow any strikes on Iraq to originate from its territory. In Baghdad, Russian envoy Viktor Posuvalyuk was on his second mission to seek a resolution to the weapons inspections crisis, and French and Turkish delegates were expected to arrive in the coming days.

Feb. 2: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed that Iraq be allowed to more than double the amount of oil it could sell every six months, from $2 billion to a total of $5.2 billion, in order to buy more humanitarian supplies.

Feb. 3: As members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were reported to be angry that a U.S. bombing campaign against Iraq would not target Saddam Hussain or his top aides, Secretary of Defense William Cohen said the U.S. would launch a “significant” attack should diplomatic efforts fail.

Iranian President Mohammed Khatami criticized the U.S. military buildup in the Gulf in preparation for a possible military strike on Iraq, and called on countries in the region to ensure their own defense, while Russian President Boris Yeltsin said a U.S. attack “could lead to a world war.”

Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrossian announced his resignation after losing support for a compromise settlement with Azerbaijan over the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Feb. 4: As Pentagon officials acknowledged that even several days of air attacks could not destroy every suspected weapons site or topple the Iraqi government, Republican congressional leaders called on President Bill Clinton to target Saddam Hussain as part of a U.S. attack on Iraq.

The Israeli Interior Ministry announced it had approved plans for the construction of Jewish settlements in the Arab East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ras al-Amoud, but a Netanyahu spokesman said the Israeli prime minister would block the project, financed by American Dr. Irving Moskowitz.

Feb. 5: President Clinton ordered 2,200 Marines to the Gulf and rejected the targeting of Saddam Hussain as part of any U.S. attack on Iraq. In Baghdad, the Iraqi president ordered the release of all Arab prisoners.

Defense Secretary Cohen urged Israel not to retaliate if Iraq should answer U.S. airstrikes with an attack on Israel.

Feb. 6: President Clinton said the goal of any U.S. strike on Iraq would be to “substantially reduce or delay” Baghdad’s ability to develop and use weapons of mass destruction.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, while telling Israelis the chance of an Iraqi attack was “very low,” insisted on “the right to self-defense.” In Bethlehem, Israeli troops fired tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets on Palestinians demonstrating in support of Saddam Hussain.

Iraq rejected U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s proposal for an increased allotment of oil sales, citing conditions imposed on which humanitarian supplies Iraq could purchase with the proceeds and how the proceeds would be allotted.

Bosnian intelligence agents arrested Goran Vasic, a former Serb soldier suspected of the 1993 killing of Bosnia’s Deputy Prime Minister Hakija Turajlic as he sat in the back of a French armored personnel carrier traveling between the Sarajevo airport and the Bosnian capital. Bosnian Serb hard-liners later retaliated for Vasic’s arrest by seizing two U.N. buses and several cars and taking an unknown number of Bosnian Muslims hostage, releasing them the next day.

A major earthquake struck the remote northern region of Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush mountain range, killing more than 4,000 people and injuring some 20,000.

Feb. 8: Defense Secretary Cohen, on a trip to Gulf states to encourage support for possible U.S. airstrikes against Iraq, said he would not seek Saudi permission to launch American warplanes from Saudi territory.

Syrian President Hafez al-Assad fired his brother Rifaat as deputy prime minister.

Feb. 9: Israel’s chief rabbinate categorically rejected any cooperation with the non-Orthodox Reform and Conservative branches of Judaism over conversions and other religious rites.

Demonstrations in support of Iraq and against the U.S. spread in the West Bank and Gaza Strip despite efforts by Palestinian police to prevent them.

Newly elected Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik granted the U.N. war crimes tribunal permission to open an office in Banja Luka.

Feb. 10: Saying, “We should not insist on humiliating” Saddam Hussain, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for more flexibility in finding a peaceful solution to the Iraqi crisis.

U.N. weapons inspectors returning from Iraq were reported to be giving briefings on Iraq to military officials in their respective governments.

Palestinian police chief Maj. Gen. Ghazi Jabali banned pro-Iraq demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Feb. 11: As the U.S. and Britain rejected an Iraqi offer to open eight presidential palaces for international inspection for a 60-day period, Gen. Anthony Zinni, commander of American forces in the Gulf, said the U.S. would be ready “within a week or so” to launch an attack on Iraq.

Members of a White House panel of experts said a link between exposure to Iraqi poison gas and Gulf war syndrome “cannot be ruled out.”

Feb. 12: As Israel embarked on a year-long celebration of its 50th anniversary, Palestinian President Arafat threatened to “cross out” the moribund peace agreements and “begin all over” with a new intifada.

On the eve of a 10-day congressional recess, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) postponed consideration of a resolution supporting the use of military force against Iraq, saying he lacked the votes for a quick approval.

During Defense Secretary Cohen’s visit to Moscow, Russian Defense Minister Igor D. Sergeyev said in a televised appearance that his country has “deep concerns over the possible costs to U.S.-Russian military relations” of a U.S. attack on Iraq.

A plane crash in southern Sudan killed Vice President Zubair Mohamed Saleh and at least seven other government officials.

Feb. 13: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced he was sending a technical team to Baghdad to try and map the eight contested sites declared off-limits to U.N. weapons inspectors.

Iran’s chief prosecutor Morteze Moqtadaie renewed the fatwa against British author Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses.

Feb. 14: As Iraq continued to release Arab prisoners, Foreign Minister Mohammed Said Sahaf met in Amman with Jordan’s King Hussein and called for a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

Following an hour-long meeting on Iraq with U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Bill Richardson, Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen said in Beijing, “If force is used it will inevitably cause serious consequences...and will not contribute to a solution.”

Milan Simic and Miroslav Tadic became the first Bosnian Serbs to turn themselves in voluntarily to the international war crimes tribunal.

Feb. 15: Defense Secretary Cohen said that U.S. airstrikes against Iraq would target conventional weapons sites as well as suspected sites of weapons of mass destruction.

Feb. 16: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi An nan announced that he would travel to Baghdad in a final attempt to reach a diplomatic resolution of the weapons inspection crisis, despite U.S. blocking of a Security Council consensus of approval of the mission.

A report by a Netanyahu-appointed government committee exonerated the Israeli prime minister for the failed attempt to assassinate Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal in Amman, instead placing blame for the botched operation on Mossad chief Danny Yatom.

In the West Bank, Israeli police evicted 35 bedouin families to make room for the expansion of an illegal Jewish settlement.

Feb. 17: Following a reported Israeli message of assurance to Saddam Hussain that it would not launch a pre-emptive strike against Iraq, the Iraqi president responded with assurances that Baghdad would not target Israel even if attacked by the U.S. Meanwhile, the militant Palestinian organization Hamas warned that, in the event of a U.S. attack on Iraq, it would attack the Jewish state.

An Iranian crowd cheered as a U.S. wrestling team carrying an American flag marched in opening ceremonies of an international meet in Tehran.

Feb. 18: At an open “Town Hall” meeting at Ohio State University in Columbus, when Secretary of State Albright, Defense Secretary Cohen and National Security Adviser Samuel Berger sought to explain the Clinton administration policy on Iraq, they were subjected to heckling from some 200 protesters and tough questions from an audience of 6,000 unconvinced of the wisdom of a military attack on Iraq. In the U.S. the meeting was seen only on CNN, which broadcast it internationally, including in Iraq.

On the eve of his trip to Baghdad, U.N. Secretary-General Annan said Iraq had indicated its willingness to engage in constructive talks.

NATO ambassadors meeting in Brussels agreed to extend the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia beyond the coming June deadline for withdrawal.

A month after he refused to escort Palestinian President Arafat on an official tour of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, director Walter Reich was removed from his position.

Feb. 19: At the conclusion of seminars requested by the Iraqi government, two panels of international experts reported that Iraq could have a secret stockpile of chemical weapons and may not have disclosed all data on its weapons of mass destruction.

Feb. 20: Arriving in Baghdad on what he called “a sacred duty,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan met with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz. Meanwhile, a team of U.N. experts appointed by Annan issued a report concluding that the “sensitive sites” declared off-limits were much smaller and different than previously claimed by the U.S. and members of the weapons inspection commission.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved the raising of the limit on Iraqi oil sales and the application of part of the revenues to the repair of Iraq’s infrastructure.

Secretary of State Albright pledged $5 million in U.S. assistance to the Bosnian Serb entity headed by newly elected Prime Minister Milorad Dodik.

Feb. 22: Following a three-hour meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussain, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced that he and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Aziz had reached an agreement, subject to U.N. Security Council approval, whereby Iraq would open disputed weapons compounds to inspectors, teams of which would have a more international composition, and sanctions would end upon Iraq’s compliance with U.N. conditions. U.S officials were cautiously noncommittal about the agreement.

Hearings to determine the citizenship, and hence the extradition of, Samuel Sheinbein, the 17-year-old who fled to Israel following the murder and dismemberment of Alfredo Tello in Maryland in September 1997, opened in Jerusalem.

Feb. 23: As world leaders hailed U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s agreement with Iraq, President Clinton endorsed it in principle but reserved “the unilateral right to respond” should Iraq break any of its terms. Clinton said U.S. forces sent to the Gulf would not be recalled immediately. Republican leaders accused the president of “subcontracting” U.S. foreign policy to the United Nations.

Members of Turkey’s banned Welfare Party joined the previously existing Virtue Party.

The EU lifted its ban on high-level contacts with Iran imposed after a German court found that Iranian leaders ordered the assassination of three Kurdish dissidents in a Berlin restaurant.

Feb. 24: Mossad chief Danny Yatom resigned amid reports of a botched Mossad wiretapping operation in Switzerland.

Feb. 25: As U.N. employees returned to Baghdad, U.S. officials said the CIA had drafted a cover plan of sabotage and subversion to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussain.

Feb. 26: Chief U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler, in his first comment on the new agreement with Iran, called it “entirely satisfactory.”

Feb. 27: Rejecting U.S. and British claims, the World Court ruled that it had the authority to rule whether Libya must surrender for trial the two Libyans accused of bombing Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Israel apologized to Switzerland for its attempted espionage in Bern, the Swiss capital.

In Ankara, thousands of protesters demonstrated for the fourth day against the Turkish government’s ban on conservative Islamic attire—head scarves for women and beards for men.

Feb. 28: Jordan lifted a week-long curfew on the southern city of Maan, where riots erupted after police shot a young Jordanian during a Feb. 20 pro-Iraq demonstration.