May/June 1996, pgs. 113-116

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

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Feb. 1: As Americans living in Saudi Arabia were warned of possible terrorist attacks directed against them, Secretary of State Warren Christopher canceled his planned trip to Riyadh, and the State Department withdrew its ambassador from and closed the American embassy in Khartoum, capital of Sudan.

Playing down Iran's reported role in Bosnia, a Saudi official who insisted on anonymity said his country funded a $300 million covert program to provide weapons to the Bosnian government with U.S. "consent combined with stealth cooperation."

As the commander of NATO troops in Bosnia, U.S. Adm. Leighton Smith, expressed concern about the slow arrival and small size of the international police force for Bosnia, U.S. warplanes and Spanish troops disarmed Bosnian government soldiers who had entered a demilitarized zone outside of Mostar, and French Special Forces troops killed one sniper and captured a second in a Serb-held suburb of Sarajevo.

More than a dozen people were killed and scores wounded as Taleban rebels attacked the besieged Afghan capital of Kabul.

Feb. 2: Senior government officials denied that the U.S. had cooperated in a secret Saudi weapons program for Bosnia.

Feb. 3: As Secretary of State Christopher visited U.S. troops in Tuzla, Sgt. 1st Class Donald Dugan became the first American soldier to be killed in Bosnia when he stepped on or picked up a land mine.

Saudi authorities took custody of Hassan Alsari, a Saudi citizen deported from Pakistan and a suspect in the November car-bombing of a Saudi National Guard training facility in Riyadh which killed five Americans and two Indians and wounded dozens more.

Feb. 5: As U.S. Secretary of State Christopher met in Jerusalem with Prime Minister Shimon Peres amid reports that the Israeli leader was planning to call for elections in late May, retired Gen. Rafael Eitan, head of the right-wing Tsomet Party, announced he was forming a coalition with opposition Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu.

Feb. 6: Iraq opened talks with U.N. officials on allowing limited sales of Iraqi oil to raise money for food and medical supplies.

The PLO Executive Committee, meeting in Egypt, delayed a decision to remove the clause in the 1964 PLO charter calling for the destruction of Israel in favor of drafting an entirely new charter.

Bosnian Serb leaders, protesting the arrest of eight Bosnian Serb soldiers and officers on suspicion of war crimes, broke off talks with the Bosnian government.

As Prime Minister Shimon Peres visited Israeli occupying troops in southern Lebanon, U.S. Secretary of State Christopher, following a 31/2-hour meeting with Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad in Damascus, announced that despite Syrian concerns that early Israeli elections would hamper negotiations, Syria would resume peace talks with Israel which had recessed Jan. 31 outside Washington, DC.

Feb. 7: Meeting with Secretary of State Christopher at Gaza's Erez checkpoint, PNA President Yasser Arafat reaffirmed his commitment to amend the PLO charter, but noted that the final responsibility lies with the Palestinian National Council, which has not yet been convened.

Judge Richard Goldstone, chief prosecutor of the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, requested the Bosnian government to retain custody of Gen. Djordje Djukic and Col. Aleksa Krsmanovic, two of the eight Bosnian Serbs being held by the government for possible indictment on war crimes charges.

Feb. 8: Bosnian Serb military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic, himself indicted for genocide by the International War Crimes Tribunal, ordered his troops to suspend contact with NATO peacekeeping forces in retaliation for the Bosnian government's detention of eight Serb soldiers and officers.

Feb.11: Israeli Prime Minister Peres officially announced that national elections would be held in May rather than in October.

Bosnian Serb leaders said Gen. Ratko Mladic's order to sever ties with NATO forces was "invalid" and had been rescinded.

Israeli Defense Ministry director-general David Ivri announced that the U.S. and Israel would conduct tests on the Arrow 2 anti-missile missile, to which the U.S. recently had committed $200 million to be paid over a five-year period, with Israel allocating $60 million a year.

Feb. 12: The Bosnian government flew two Bosnian Serb officers suspected of war crimes to The Hague, then announced it no longer would arrest people on suspicion of war crimes without prior authorization by the International War Crimes Tribunal.

Feb. 13: Saying it had intelligence information on a possible terrorist attack, Israel closed off the West Bank and Gaza Strip until further notice.

In Oslo, an agreement on water resource management was signed by Israel, Jordan and the PNA.

Feb. 14: U.S., NATO and Russian leaders summoned the presidents of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia to a meeting in Rome to address problems in the implementation of the Balkan peace agreement.

Clinton administration officials said the U.S. was considering delaying a planned shipment of U.S. military equipment to Pakistan following reports that Islamabad had purchased nuclear equipment from China.

Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, who was quoted as calling the U.S. the "Great Satan" while in Iran as part of a "world friendship" tour, was criticized by the State Department for "cavorting" with those who "support international terrorism."

Feb. 15: French NATO troops discovered an arms cache and detained some 11 people, including five Iranians believed already to have left the country, in a house described as a "terrorist training" center outside Sarajevo.

Nation of Islam Minister Farrakhan, meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussain, denounced the U.S. policy toward Baghdad as "wicked," saying it was leading to the "mass murder" of the Iraqi people.

Feb. 18: Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, meeting in Rome with U.S. Assistant Secretaries of State Richard Holbrooke (European affairs) and John Shattuck (human rights), agreed on a series of measures to strengthen the implementation of the Dayton peace accord.

The Iraqi National Accord, a secular opposition group to Saddam Hussain, opened an office in Amman, indicating an escalation in Jordanian King Hussein's campaign against the Iraqi leader.

Feb. 19: Israel approved the return to self-rule areas of 154 members of the Palestine National Council, the body which must vote on repealing anti-Israel clauses of the PLO charter.

Bosnian Serb deputy commander Maj. Gen. Zdravko Tolimir failed to attend a key NATO meeting aboard the USS George Washington.

The son-in-law of Saddam Hussain, Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel Hassan Majeed, said he hoped to return to Iraq, adding that "The initial response of the leadership was positive and welcomed my return."

Palestinian leader Faisal Husseini called on countries to defy a threat by Israeli Internal Security Minister Moshe Shalal to halt visits by foreign representatives to Orient House, PLO headquarters in East Jerusalem.

U.N. and Iraqi officials ended talks on limited Iraqi oil sales to pay for food and medical supplies.

Feb. 20: The Emirate of Qatar arrested some 100 men in connection with an alleged plot to return Sheikh Khalifa Bin Hamad, deposed as ruler by his son, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa, last July.

Accompanied by his brother and fellow defector Col. Saddam Kamel Hassan Majeed and their wives, both of whom are daughters of Saddam Hussain, Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel Hassan Majeed returned to Iraq from his asylum in Jordan.

Moroccan-born former Israeli Foreign Minister and Likud member David Levy announced he was forming a new political party, Gesher (Bridge), and would run for prime minister.

Bosnian Serb leaders were reported to be urging Serb residents of Sarajevo suburbs to flee before their towns are reunited under Bosnian government rule.

Israel conducted a second successful launch of its U.S.-financed Arrow 2 missile, although its ability to intercept other missiles was not tested.

Feb. 21: After days of wrangling between Labor and Likud members, an Israeli Knesset committee announced that national elections would be held May 29.

Feb. 22: The U.S. agreed to pay up to $300,000 to families of each of the Iranian passengers of an Iran Air jetliner shot down over the Persian Gulf by the USS Vincennes in 1988. (Payments to families of non-Iranian victims had been made earlier.) Washington and Tehran also agreed to settle banking disputes stemming from the 1981 U.S. Embassy hostage crisis.

Feb. 23: The Iraqi government announced that Saddam Hussain's sons-in-law, Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel Majeed and Col. Saddam Kamel Majeed, who both had returned three days earlier from asylum in Jordan, had been killed by their relatives after being divorced by their wives.

Israel lifted an 11-day closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Thousands of Serbs began fleeing the Sarajevo suburbs of Vogosca, Ilidza and Ilijas.

Feb. 24: U.S. intelligence services said Libya was near completion of the world's largest underground chemical weapons plant.

Feb. 25: Saying it was to avenge the assassination of Yahya Ayyash, Hamas claimed responsibility for suicide bomb explosions on a downtown Jerusalem commuter bus and in the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon which killed 25 people, including two Americans, and injured some 77 more.

In his first U.S. public appearance following his 23-nation "world friendship" tour of Africa and the Middle East, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan vowed to accept $1 billion from Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. Asked if he would testify before Congress if summoned, the African American leader said he would "call the roll call of the members of Congress who are honorary members of the Knesset" and question U.S. foreign policy priorities, saying, "Every year, you give Israel $4 to $6 billion of the taxpayer money and you haven't asked the people Who are you an agent of?"

Feb. 26: Israeli Prime Minister Peres, saying "we will not halt the peace process," vowed to wage a "methodical and incessant" war against Hamas militants.

Palestinian American Ahmed Hamideh was shot to death by two Israelis when his car plunged into a crowed of people at a Jerusalem bus stop. Police said Hamideh may have lost control of his rental car, citing long skid marks and bags of groceries in the back seat.

Confessed assassin Yigal Amir, his brother Hagai, and friend Dror Adani pled not guilty to charges of conspiring to murder the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Feb. 27: Following the latest two suicide bombings in Israel, PNA police rounded up scores of militant Islamists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Acting Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller said she was "prepared to do what I have to do" and reach an agreement with the rival True Path party in order to prevent the Islamist Refah (Welfare) party from forming a government.

NATO troops sighted Bosnian Serb leader and indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic four times in the Serb-held stronghold of Banja Luka, but decided not to attempt detaining him because of the risks involved.

The U.S. extended its travel ban on Lebanon for another six months.

Feb. 28: Following Israeli Prime Minister Peres' threat to delay troop withdrawals from Hebron unless Palestinian extremists are reined in, PNA President Arafat gave Islamic militants one day to surrender their weapons or face PNA police raids.

Syria and Israel resumed talks outside Washington, DC.

Feb. 29: Hamas offered to "halt military activities against Jewish civilians" if Israel agreed within eight days to stop "organized terrorism against Hamas and aggression against Palestinian civilians" and to release all Hamas prisoners held in Israeli jails.

The Bosnian government formally declared that the siege of Sarajevo had ended.

March 1: The International War Crimes Tribunal indicted Gen. Djordje Djukic, one of two Bosnian Serb officers captured by the Bosnian government and extradited to The Hague, for war crimes including the shelling of civilian targets in Sarajevo.

March 2: The PNA issued an official statement saying that "individuals or groups" carrying unlicensed weapons "would be tried in court as outlaws" and, if convicted, could receive sentences of 5 to 15 years.

Several Bosnian Serb military units cancelled meetings with NATO forces in Bosnia's U.S.-controlled sector.

March 3: Hamas claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing of another No. 18 commuter bus in Jerusalem which killed 19 people and wounded 10. Israel earlier had rejected a Hamas cease-fire offer.

Turkey's two main secular parties, Prime Minister Tansu Ciller's True Path and rival Mesut Yilmaz' Motherland, signed a coalition agreement ending two months of political maneuvering following the election victory of the Islamist Refah (Welfare) party.

Indian and Pakistani troops clashed across the disputed dividing line of Kashmir.

March 4: A fourth suicide bomb in less than two weeks was exploded outside the largest shopping mall in Tel Aviv, killing 12 and wounding 126, bringing the suicide bomb death toll to 63 (including the bombers). The Israeli government sealed off the West Bank and Gaza Strip and banned the employment of Palestinians in West Bank Jewish settlements.

President Clinton's top Middle East policy advisers met at the White House to develop a strategy to provide Israel with greater anti-terrorism assistance.

March 6: In separate raids, Israeli police arrested an Arab citizen of Israel accused of smuggling a suicide bomber from the Gaza Strip into Tel Aviv and Palestinian security police arrested, tried and convicted a recruiter of three of the recent suicide bombers.

Sudan's 12-day election period opened amid predictions of a low voter turnout and a victory over his 40 challengers for Islamist President Lt. Gen. Omar Bashir.

March 7: The newly elected Palestinian National Council was inaugurated in ceremonies in Gaza City.

Senior Bosnian Serb, Croat and government commanders of forces in the U.S. peacekeeping zone met to discuss upcoming military requirements under the Dayton peace accords.

March 8: In Iran's first round of nationwide parliamentary elections, conservative and reformist candidates for the new 270-seat Majlis battled to a draw.

Iraqi authorities barred a U.N. weapons inspection team from a building in Baghdad thought to contain sensitive military records.

Israeli troops dynamited the rented family home of suicide bomber Rayid Shagnoubi in the West Bank village of Burka.

March 9: Having arrested more than 600 alleged Hamas militants in the past week, the PNA extended its crackdown, raiding Hamas mosques, clubs and welfare organizations.

March 10: As Palestinian security forces announced the arrest of three Hamas militants suspected of involvement in the recent suicide bombings in Israel, Hamas vowed to "resume its suicide operations."

Hezbollah guerrillas attacked Israeli occupation troops in southern Lebanon, killing at least one soldier and wounding five others.

The European Union called on Iran to make a clear statement of its opposition to terrorism.

March 11: Saying "the Israelis can only sacrifice so much," President Clinton urged PNA President Arafat to take stronger steps against Hamas.

March 12: As FBI Director Louis Freeh told the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations that Hamas continues to raise funds in the U.S., Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-NY), chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said he is withholding some $13 million in aid to the Palestinian National Authority until "the PLO...fulfills its written obligations to root out terrorist groups in its midst."

Following an 11-hour standoff, Iraqi officials allowed U.N. inspectors to enter a military installation outside Baghdad.

March 13: President Clinton joined more than than two dozen world leaders in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, at an anti-terrorism summit called in response to the recent suicide bombings in Israel.

In an easing of its nine-day-old siege of the Palestinian autonomous areas, Israel allowed trucks to bring food supplies into the Gaza Strip and instructed troops not to prevent sick people from seeking medical treatment.

March 14: As Israeli troops blew up the home of the widow and children of Yahya Ayyash, the Hamas "engineer" whose assassination sparked the recent suicide bombings in Israel, President Clinton, visiting Jerusalem following the Sharm el-Sheikh summit, blamed Palestinian militants for Israel's closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and promised $100 million to supply Israel with anti-terrorism training and technical assistance.

Lebanon observed a nationwide strike called for by Shi'i leader and speaker of parliament Nabih Berri as a Day of Solidarity with Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon,

March 15: Israel lifted roadblocks which had confined residents in 456 West Bank towns and villages, but kept in place its 20-day-old blockade preventing Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza from entering Israel.

At a U.S.-sponsored conference in Ankara, U.S. and Turkish officials discussed the equipping and training of the Bosnian Muslim-Croatian federation army.

March 17: Departing Serbs set fire to scores of houses and apartment buildings in Grbavica, the last of five Sarajevo suburbs to be returned to Bosnian Muslim-Croat federation control, in an effort to ensure that no Bosnian Serbs stayed behind.

Israeli Prime Minister Peres proposed establishing an international fund to help create jobs for Palestinians, but said the closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip would continue indefinitely.

March 18: At a Geneva meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Christopher and European diplomats, Presidents Tudjman of Croatia, Milosevic of Serbia, and Acting President Ejup Ganic of Bosnia agreed on further steps to implement the Dayton peace accords, including the extradition of three senior Croatian and Serbian officers to The Hague to be tried for war crimes.

The U.S. denounced the acquittal by Lebanon's top appeals court of two former members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine for involvement in the 1976 murder of U.S. Ambassador Francis Meloy, Jr., economic counselor Robert Waring, and their Lebanese driver, Mohammed Moghrabi.

A second round of Iraqi-U.N. negotiations over Baghdad's possible sale of oil to pay for food and humanitarian supplies ended without agreement.

March 19: People returned to their homes as the city and suburbs of Sarajevo were reunited after more than four years under Bosnian Serb siege.

Austria arrested a Bosnian Muslim said to have killed Serb civilians and German authorities arrested a Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat suspected of war crimes.

The Clinton administration notified the Senate that it intended to proceed with an approved shipment of conventional arms to Pakistan.

As it had earlier done with the new head of Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security service, the Israeli daily Ha'aretz broke a decades-old taboo and identified the new leader of Mossad, Israel's overseas intelligence service, as Maj. Gen. Danny Yatom.

Following Algeria's participation in the recent anti-terrorism summit, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Robert Pelletreau met with senior government officials in Algiers.

March 20: Ending a longstanding rivalry, Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu merged former Likud Foreign Minister David Levy's recently founded Gesher Party into the Likud Party along with Rafael Eitan's Tsomet Party in a deal brokered by former Likud Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. Levy, Eitan and some of their followers were offered positions near the top of the Likud list in the May Israeli elections.

U.N. and U.S. officials said Iraq may have hidden between 6 and 16 ballistic missiles capable of attacking Israel, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.

March 21: In the Serb-held city of Vukovar, scheduled to return to Croatian rule under the Dayton peace accords, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright was mobbed by a crowd shouting epithets and throwing stones at her motorcade as she departed with U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith.

With the support of PNA President Arafat, a group of former Hamas members proclaimed the formation of a new party, the Islamic National Salvation Party, sharing Hamas' Islamist ideology but rejecting violence.

The Afghan Islamist Taleban militia convened a week-long shura of some 300 Islamic scholars in an attempt to end the country's civil war and create an Islamic government.

March 22: Senior U.S. officials, including U.N. Ambassador Albright and Adm. Leighton Smith, commander of the NATO-led peacekeeping operation in Bosnia, visited a farm in Pilice, east of Tuzla, the site of a suspected mass grave of hundreds of Muslims executed by Bosnian Serbs after the fall of the U.N. "safe area" of Srebrenica.

The International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague issued its first indictments for crimes against Serbs.

Spanish police captured Youssef Magied Molqi, the Palestinian convicted of murdering American Leon Klinghoffer during the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro who had escaped from an Italian prison in February.

March 23: Palestinian security police arrested Fouad Nahhal, acting head of the newly formed Islamic National Salvation Party, as he returned from meeting with PNA President Yasser Arafat.

Minutes before a midnight deadline, the Bosnian government released 109 Serb prisoners, but continued to hold 26 prisoners in Tuzla.

Following his landslide election victory, Sudanese President Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan al-Bashir promised a continued rule of "Islamic law and dignity."

March 24: New Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz called upon Greece to begin a "comprehensive process of peaceful settlement" of the disputes between the two countries.

March 25: Following a gun battle the previous day in which at least 11 people were killed, Indian authorities gave armed Kashmiri separatists taking refuge in Srinagar's Hazratbal shrine two days to surrender or face stiff punishment.

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton visited U.S. peacekeeping troops in Bosnia.

March 26: Mohammad Dahlan, PNA head of preventive security, said Palestinian police had uncovered a secret network within the military wing of Hamas dedicated to attacking Israel and weakening the PNA government of Yasser Arafat.

New disturbances erupted in Bahrain following the execution of Isa Qambar, a Shi'i dissident convicted of killing a police officer.

Adm. Scott Redd, commander of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, said Iran had received a new shipment of Chinese patrol boats armed with cruise missiles.

Chief NATO spokesman U.S. Navy Capt. Mark van Dyke said NATO had proof that Iranians were training Bosnian government soldiers in Bosnia.

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and daughter Chelsea began a three-day visit to Turkey.

March 27: Self-confessed assassin Yigal Amir was convicted of the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and sentenced to life in prison.

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic told a weekly newspaper that "we have to have America on our side," noting that "Iran is far away and our enemies are very, very close."

German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel cancelled a meeting with Bosnian Muslim and Croat leaders meant to strengthen their federation.

March 28: An Israeli commission of inquiry's final report on the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin blamed the Shin Bet security service for exposing Rabin to "serious risks" and ignoring the growing threats against him.

At the opening of a two-day follow-up meeting to the recent anti-terrorism summit, U.S. Secretary of State Christopher announced an emergency plan to ease Israeli restrictions on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while Israeli forces arrested more than 370 Palestinians in raids at Ramallah's Bir Zeit University and elsewhere in the occupied West Bank.

March 29: In the recently liberated Sarajevo suburb of Grbavica, Bosnian Serbs fired at police officers from the Muslim-Croat federation.

March 30: Serbia handed over to the International War Crimes Tribunal two soldiers accused of massacring Muslims following the fall of Srebrenica, and Croatia announced that one of its generals wanted for war crimes would surrender in two days.

March 31: As Bosnian Muslim and Croat negotiators agreed on steps to strengthen their federation, U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry said American peacekeeping troops would provide security to international war crimes investigators examining suspected mass grave sites around Srebrenica. Perry also said there might be "some phasing down" of U.S. troops in Bosnia in the fall.