June 1995, Pages 105-107

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

Compiled by Janet McMahon

March 1: Iran criticized the U.S. for warning against Tehran's deployment of Hawk missiles on an island in the Persian Gulf, saying they were for defensive purposes and citing Israel's "recent threats...about attacking Iran."

March 2: U.N. peacekeeping troops, under the escort of U.S. and Italian forces, completed their withdrawal from Somalia.

March 3: Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin warned against cuts in U.S. aid to Arab countries involved in peace talks with Israel.

March 6: On the eve of U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher's 11th trip to the region, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Beilin warned Syria that it should reach a peace accord with Israel by summer, after which campaigning for 1996 Israeli parliamentary elections "will make bold decisions very difficult."

—The Houston-based and du Pont-owned oil company Conoco Inc. announced it had been awarded a major contract by Iran to develop a large offshore oil field in the Persian Gulf.

—In Zagreb, a new military alliance between Croatia and Bosnia against Serb rebels was announced as "a preparation and an agreement on how to act if the situation starts deteriorating."

March 7: Talks between Israel, the PLO, Jordan and Egypt on the repatriation of refugees from the 1967 Six-Day War opened in Amman.

—White House spokesman Michael McCurry called Conoco's oil deal with Iran, while legal, "not a helpful development."

March 8: Masked gunmen ambushed a U.S. Consulate van in Karachi, killing two American employees and wounding a third. An FBI team of investigators was sent to work with Pakistani authorities investigating the attack.

—As Jordan's Foreign Minister Abdul-Karim Kabariti said "U.S. credibility as a full partner in the peace process...is now under scrutiny," Secretary of State Warren Christopher met in Cairo with Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa.

—A highly classified CIA report based on aerial photography and "an enormous amount of precise technical analysis" concluded that 90 percent of the "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia was carried out by Serbs.

March 9:Israel and the Palestinian National Authority agreed to conclude by July 1 negotiations on extending Palestinian self-rule throughout the West Bank.

March 10: Meeting in Gaza, U.S. Secretary of State Christopher told PNA leader Yasser Arafat that "Gaza cannot be a safe haven for the terrorists," but promised that the U.S. would try to free up some $36 million in aid promised by foreign donors.

—A bomb exploded outside a Karachi mosque following Friday prayers, killing 11 and wounding at least 22.

March 11: Croatian President Franjo Tudjman agreed to extend the U.N. peacekeeping mandate beyond March 31 in return for a promise that the current 12,000 U.N. troops will be replaced by a force of 5,000 to 6,000, with about 10 percent to guard Croatia's borders with Bosnia and Serbia.

March 12: In fighting around Kabul, Afghan government troops under the command of army chief Ahmed Shah Masoud routed the recently successful Taliban (Islamic Youth) and an Iran-supported Shi'i militia led by Abdul Ali Mazari.

— Secretary of State Warren Christopher announced that he and his chief of staff, Thomas E. Donilon, would recuse themselves from policy discussions on Conoco's oil deal with Iran because their former law firm, O'Melveny & Myers, was representing the U.S. oil company.

March 13: After meeting for five hours with Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad to discuss the Golan Heights, Secretary of State Christopher flew to Amman, where he reassured King Hussein of the Clinton administration's commitment to write off the entire Jordanian debt to the U.S. of $275 million, rather than only $50 million as proposed by a House subcommittee.

—Rebel Croatian Serbs rejected the change in the U.N. peacekeeping mandate agreed to by Croatian President Franjo Tudjman. Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense William Perry said U.S. soldiers would comprise about half of an 80-member NATO force to be sent to Croatia to assist in the scaling back of the U.N. peacekeeping presence from its current level of 12,000 to some 5,000 troops.

March 14: Following a White House announcement that President Clinton would issue an executive order barring U.S. companies from participating in development projects with Iran, Conoco said it would abandon its recent agreement to develop Iranian oil and gas fields in the Persian Gulf.

—After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, U.S. Secretary of State Christopher again flew to Damascus to meet with Syrian President Assad, who agreed to reopen direct talks in Washington with Israel on the Golan Heights.

—On the anniversary of Israel's 1978 invasion, Lebanon observed a general strike to demand implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 425 calling for Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

March 15:Following a White House meeting with President Clinton, Morocco's King Hassan II urged a speeding up of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

March 16: Secretary of State Christopher called for the extension of the current Bosnian cease-fire beyond its May 1 expiration whether or not the Bosnian Serbs agree.

— Senate Banking Committee Chairman Alfonse D'Amato (R-NY) opened hearings on a bill to prohibit U.S. companies and their subsidiaries, which last year bought some $4 billion of Iranian crude oil, from doing business with Iran.

March 17: Two U.S. citizens driving to visit friends serving in the U.N.'s Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission near the border between the two countries were arrested by Iraqi authorities after they mistakenly entered Iraqi territory.

— Pakistani police arrested six men—three Sudanese, an Iranian and two Pakistanis, one of whom was born in Syria—suspected of having links with Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the alleged mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing.

March 19: Following a meeting in the Northern Arabian Desert with Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan at which he showed satellite pictures of Iraqi military positions, U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry said Riyadh agreed that moderate Gulf states should increase their military readiness.

—Two Israelis were killed and five wounded in an ambush on a bus near Kiryat Arba, the right-wing Jewish settlement on the outskirts of Hebron.

March 20: With a force of 35,000 troops backed by warplanes and artillery, Turkey launched an attack on rebel Kurds in northern Iraq.

—In Cairo, Egyptian President Mubarak and U.S. Vice President Al Gore launched a "Partnership for Growth," designed to shift U.S. aid from grants to private-sector promotion.

—Israel and Syria resumed secret talks in Washington, with the U.S. playing a more active role.

—More than a month before the expiration of the Bosnian cease-fire, Bosnian government troops began an offensive against Serb-held positions.

March 21:Bosnian Serb troops shelled the northern town of Tuzla and stole weapons from U.N. peacekeepers near Sarajevo.

March 23: Concluding a six-day trip to Gulf states, U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry and Qatar's emir, Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad Al-Thani, agreed to speed up the positioning of sufficient weapons and other equipment to support two battalions of a U.S. armored brigade in the region.

—In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic said he would support only a 30-day extension of the U.N. peacekeeping mandate, due to expire March 31.

—The Turkish government said its 35,000 troops currently in northern Iraq would not be withdrawn until a buffer zone was established to prevent Kurdish rebels from moving back into the region.

—The FBI placed on its 10 Most Wanted List and offered a $4 million reward for the two Libyan intelligence agents charged with the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

March 24: PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat promised U.S. Vice President Gore, on a three-hour visit to Jericho, that he would prosecute "those who are jeopardizing the peace process."

—Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller asked that the U.S., Britain and France review their policy on the safe haven for Kurds in northern Iraq, which separatist Kurds have been using as a base of operations against Turkey.

March 25:An Iraqi judge imposed eight-year prison terms on two Americans, William Barloon and David Daliberti, arrested for illegally entering Iraq.

March 26: First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter Chelsea began a visit to South Asia in Islamabad, Pakistan, where they met with Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and visited the Faisal mosque.

March 29: The Algerian newspaper El Watan reported that a government offensive had killed more than 1,000 Islamist rebels, in fighting east and southwest of the capital.

— Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip shot and killed a Palestinian truck driver who they said deliberately drove his truck into an Israeli police jeep, killing two policemen and seriously wounding two others.

March 30: Rejecting U.S. urgings that sanctions on Libya be expanded to include an oil embargo, the U.N. Security Council made no changes in the sanctions imposed in connection with the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

—In an open letter to Algerian President Liamine Zeroual, Islamic Salvation Army head Madani Merzak condemned abuses by government troops and militant Islamists alike and called for the peaceful resolution of the country's civil war.

—Following a peace initiative by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, the South Sudan People's Liberation Army, responding to a similar announcement by the Khartoum government, announced a two-month cease-fire in Sudan's civil war.

March 31: Following the killing of Hezbollah senior commander Rida Yassin, in an Israeli U.S.-built Cobra helicopter attack on his car, Hezbollah guerrillas fired rockets at northern Israel, killing one Israeli. After Israel retaliated by shelling villages in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah Politburo chief Hussein Khalil accused Israel of violating a two-year-old agreement not to target civilians, saying "we are no longer committed to this agreement."

—The U.N. Security Council approved a five-nation "contact group" proposal for a restructuring of U.N. peacekeeping troops in Bosnia, Croatia and Macedonia and a reduction in the number of troops in Croatia.

April 2: Three Algerian opposition parties, the National Liberation Front, Nahda and the Socialist Forces Front, opened talks with President Liamine Zeroual.

—At least eight people were killed and some 30 wounded when a bomb exploded in a Gaza City neighborhood. Palestinian police said some of the victims, believed to be members of Hamas, were assembling the bomb when it exploded.

—In an effort to deter Russia's planned sale of nuclear reactors to Iran, the Clinton administration provided Russian officials with U.S. intelligence on the Islamic republic. In Moscow, Secretary of Defense William Perry said U.S. aid to Russian military conversion programs should continue.

—Philippine police announced they had arrested six men "believed to be affiliated" with Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the exiled Egyptian cleric on trial for plotting to blow up several New York landmarks.

—Two days before Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's scheduled U.S. visit, Pakistan turned over to U.S. authorities two alleged heroin druglords.

April 3:Russia rejected U.S. appeals to cancel its sale of two nuclear reactors to Iran.

April 4: Several hundred Iranians were killed when Revolutionary Guards fired into a crowd of thousands of demonstrators protesting the lack of fresh water in a working-class district south of Tehran.

—Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, visiting Washington, met with Republican congressional leaders to urge continued U.S. economic support.

April 5: At a White House meeting, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told President Clinton that, while Egypt still might insist that Israel sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Cairo would not lobby other countries to agree to that condition.

—Israel launched its first spy satellite, which will include Syria, Iran and Iraq in its low-orbit scanning path.

—PNA justice official Freih Abu Middein announced that five members of the PNA intelligence service, including officers, had been arrested for involvement in the killing of a Palestinian collaborator.

—Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi said Libyan planes would defy the U.N. air embargo to transport pilgrims to Mecca and said he was considering withdrawing from the U.N because the world body was "controlled by the big powers."

April 7:As Bosnian Serbs continued to block access to Sarajevo, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said he might be willing to return to Bosnia to revive the cease-fire agreement he negotiated, but would need an invitation from the Bosnian government in addition to his standing invitation from the Bosnian Serbs.

April 8: The Clinton administration warned Russia that it might abandon plans for nuclear cooperation if Moscow proceeded with its sale of nuclear reactors to Iran.

— Turkey withdrew 3,000 of its 35,000 troops in northern Iraq.

April 9: Seven Israelis and an American student were killed and at least 46 people wounded in two suicide bomb attacks on Israeli soldiers guarding Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip.

—The U.N. said Bosnian Serbs were firing into civilian neighborhoods in Sarajevo using weapons prohibited from the "heavy weapons exclusion zone" surrounding the capital.

April 10: The Palestinian National Authority arrested more than 100 alleged Islamic militants and announced that its new military court, in a secret overnight trial, had convicted Islamic Jihad member Samir Jidi, 32, of recruiting young suicide bombers, sentencing him to 15 years in prison.

—U.N. Special Weapons Commission chairman Rolf Ekeus, saying that Baghdad had not fully accounted for its biological weapons program, reported that Iraq may have acquired "a biological warfare agent."

—Azerbaijani officials confirmed that, following intense U.S. pressure, Iran's five- percent share in a Western-led Caspian Sea oil consortium had been cancelled, and replaced by Exxon.

April 11: Following a White House meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in which she asked that the U.S. provide 28 F-16 fighter jets or the more than $600 million Pakistan has paid for them, President Clinton said he would "ask Congress to show some flexibility" on the Pressler Amendment, which forbids the sale of U.S. arms to Pakistan.

—Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott backed Turkey's plan to stabilize northern Iraq by unifying Iraqi Kurds against Turkish Kurds.

—Administration officials said the CIA had requested $19 million from Congress to continue covert operations in Iran and Iraq.

April 12:As a team of FBI agents traveled to the Gaza Strip to help investigate the death of an American citizen in the April 9 suicide bombings, the number of suspected Islamic militants arrested since April 9 by the Palestinian National Authority grew to some 300, and the PNA called for gun owners in the Gaza Strip to register their weapons within a month.

April 13: A "senior State Department official" acknowledged that the Clinton administration has tacitly accepted Iranian arms deliveries to the Bosnian government.

—The alleged mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, and another man, Abdul Hakim Murad, were charged with conspiring to blow up U.S. jetliners in Asia.

April 14: The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to allow Iraq to sell $2 billion worth of oil over the next six months.

—PNA President Yasser Arafat refused to accept a truce between Gaza's PLO and Hamas groups unless Hamas agreed to end attacks on Israelis from the self-rule area and its opposition to the Oslo agreement.

April 15: On the day before Easter, Israel closed off the West Bank and Gaza Strip for Passover week.

— Baghdad denounced the U.N. plan to allow limited Iraqi oil sales.

April 16:As a PNA military court sentenced two Hamas members to two-year prison terms, Israeli security police dressed as Arabs ambushed and killed three alleged Hamas militants.

April 17: U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia Victor Jackovich was prevented by a low-ranking Bosnian Serb officer from boarding a U.N. plane leaving Sarajevo, forcing the departing American diplomat, who is being reassigned because of policy differences with the State Department, to drive on an exposed narrow mountain road out of the Bosnian capital.

—Israel expelled two Palestinian political prisoners, Khamis Khodor, 58, who had been held for 25 years, and Mohammad al-Joulani, 27, to southern Lebanon, where they were refused entry by Lebanese soldiers and put in the custody of U.N. peacekeepers.

—China rejected a U.S. request to ban nuclear reactor sales to Iran.

April 18: As Israeli-Syrian talks were scheduled to resume in Washington, Syria's chief negotiator, Ambassador to the U.S. Walid al-Moualem, remained in Damascus.

—France threatened to withdraw its U.N. peacekeeping contingent from Bosnia following the shooting deaths of two of its soldiers.

April 19: Following the car-bombing of Oklahoma City's federal building, an FBI advisory said three suspects, two of "Middle Eastern description," were being sought for questioning.

—Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller told President Clinton at a White House meeting that Turkey expected to withdraw its troops from northern Iraq in "a matter of weeks."

—The U.N. Security Council relaxed its air embargo on Libya to allow Egyptian planes to carry Libyan pilgrims to Mecca.

April 20: Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa formally announced that his country would not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty extension unless Israel agreed to sign the pact.

— U.S. officials said Saudi Arabia refused to allow a plane carrying Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyah, believed to be responsible for the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut, to make a scheduled stop in Jeddah, where FBI agents had hoped to arrest him.

April 21: FBI officials arrested Timothy McVeigh, an American Christian white male army veteran, said to have strong anti-government convictions, for the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.

—With Russia and China abstaining, the U.N. Security Council voted to tighten the closure of Serbia's 320-mile border with Bosnia.

—Israel's chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, in a Passover sermon at Jerusalem's main synagogue, criticized the appearance at a Tel Aviv University theological seminar on the Holocaust of Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger of France, a Jew whose family died in the Holocaust and who converted to Christianity in 1940, at the age of 14.

April 22:U.N. Special Envoy Yasushi Akashi and four American and German diplomats, including acting U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia John Menzies, left the Sarajevo airport after a 24-hour standoff during which Bosnian Serbs refused to allow the diplomats to travel the five miles into the capital city.

April 23: The Palestinian National Authority and Saudi Arabia agreed to Israeli demands that Muslim Palestinian pilgrims to Mecca continue to carry Jordanian travel documents rather than Palestinian passports.

April 24: U.N. War Crimes Tribunal prosecutor Richard Goldstone announced that he was investigating Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and army commander Ratko Mladic on suspicion of genocide, murder, rape, torture and ethnic cleansing.

April 25: Turkey withdrew 20,000 troops from northern Iraq, leaving behind a force of 12,000.

—The Iran-backed Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing of an Israeli army convoy in southern Lebanon which wounded 22 people, including nine Israeli soldiers.

April 26: At the opening hearing of the International War Crimes Tribunal on Bosnia, Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic pleaded not guilty of murdering, torturing and raping Bosnian Muslim prisoners at the Serb-run Omarska concentration camp.

— Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said Israeli soldiers at three West Bank army bases would be reassigned.

April 27: Israel announced plans to confiscate 130 acres of Arab-owned land in East Jerusalem to build new Jewish neighborhoods and a police headquarters.

— Lebanon's parliament passed a law permitting some 17,000 Lebanese missing as a result of the country's 15-year civil war officially to be declared dead.

April 28:A Scottish doctor who performed an autopsy on 30-year-old Abd al-Samed Harizat, a Hebron Palestinian who died after three days in Israeli custody, said "there can be no debate that this is a death as the result of torture and nothing else."

April 30: President Clinton issued an order banning all U.S. investment in and trade with Iran.

—As the four-month cease-fire brokered by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter expired and fighting intensified, Bosnian Serb and government officials rebuffed U.N. efforts to extend the truce.