Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 1999, pages 78-81

Facts For Your Files

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Feb. 1, 1999: A joint appeal by 146 Israeli writers, artists and intellectuals called for a Palestinian state in all of the West Bank and Gaza and a shared capital of Jerusalem.

•A group of male and female American rabbis praying at Jerusalem’s Western Wall were surrounded and harassed by some 100 Israeli yeshiva students.

•The U.S. urged the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to improve evacuation plans for 1,070 OSCE peace monitors in Kosovo in the event of NATO airstrikes.

•Greece denied Turkey’s charges that Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan had arrived in Athens on a private plane.

•In Cyprus, two Israeli undercover agents were sentenced to three years in prison after espionage charges were dropped and they pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

•In Egypt’s largest such trial, 107 alleged members of the outlawed Jihad movement appeared before a military tribunal on charges ranging from forgery to conspiracy to overthrow the government.

Feb. 2: The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) agreed to attend upcoming peace talks in France.

•U.S. warplanes destroyed two of three Iraqi anti-ship missile launchers recently positioned near Gulf oil lanes and also bombed targets in the northern and southern “no-fly” zones.

•CIA Director George Tenet warned in Senate testimony that alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden may be planning imminent attacks on Americans.

Feb. 3: Palestinian President Yasser Arafat met with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to discuss the possible declaration of Palestinian statehood on May 4, the date for completion of the Oslo accords.

•Israeli President Ezer Weizman commuted the sentences of five Israeli Jews imprisoned for the murder or attempted murder of Palestinians.

•Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit ordered a nationwide crackdown on Islamist activity.

•Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Rick Inderfurth told Taliban Deputy Foreign Minister Jalil Akhund that Osama bin Laden must be “expelled from Afghanistan and brought to justice for his crimes.”

•The U.N. announced it would no longer include American and British citizens in its humanitarian missions to Iraq.

Feb. 4: King Hussein of Jordan was flown home from the U.S. in critical condition after unsuccessful treatment for his recurrent cancer.

•Meeting in Washington, President Bill Clinton urged Palestinian President Arafat to increase his efforts to reassure Israelis about the safety of Jewish residents of future Palestinian-controlled territories.

•The Serbian parliament voted 227-3 to send a delegation to Kosovo peace talks in France, but rejected the deployment of foreign troops to police any peace accord.

•Chief U.N. weapons inspector Richard Butler said he would not renew his contract when it expires in June.

Feb. 5: International donors announced they would give $770 million for Palestinian development projects in addition to the $2.5 billion provided since the 1993 Oslo accord.

Feb. 6: As King Hussein lay near death, the Jordanian parliament transferred power to Crown Prince Abdullah.

•After having been detained by Serbian police as they were leaving Pristina, the ethnic Albanian delegation arrived late as Kosovo peace talks opened in France.

Feb. 7: King Hussein of Jordan died of lymphatic cancer at the age of 63, having ruled his country for 47 years.

•Meeting separately with international negotiators, Serb officials and ethnic Albanian delegates agreed on principles maintaining Kosovo as a Serbian province for at least three more years.

Feb. 8: President Clinton and former Presidents George Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford were among the world leaders attending King Hussein’s funeral in Amman.

•Fighting resumed between neighboring Ethiopia and Eritrea after an eight-month cease-fire.

Feb. 9: In what was described as the opening of a new settlement, an Israeli family moved into a former army outpost on the occupied Golan Heights.

•Iran’s minister of intelligence, Qorbanali Dorri Najafadadi, resigned following revelations that “renegade” agents were responsible for the killings of several Iranian opposition writers and intellectuals.

Feb. 10: U.S. and British warplanes attacked several Iraqi air-defense sites after Iraqi fighters violated the southern “no-fly” zone.

•Nearly a month after the Jan. 16 massacre, Serbian authorities returned the bodies of 40 Kosovo Albanians killed in the village of Racak.

Feb. 11: U.S. warplanes struck at seven Iraqi air defense sites in both the northern and southern “no-fly” zones.

•British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook accused the Serbs of delaying tactics at Kosovo peace talks in France.

•At a rally marking the 20th anniversary of the Islamic revolution, Iranian President Mohamed Khatami said his country should work for stability, the rule of law, and a lessening of tensions with the outside world.

Feb. 12: Palestinian President Arafat revived the idea of a Palestinian-Jordanian federation.

•The U.N. appointed three panels to advise the Security Council on its dealings with Iraq.

•As Secretary of State Albright joined peace talks in France, ethnic Albanian rebels fired on a Serbian police patrol near the Kosovo capital of Pristina.

Feb. 13: The day after being acquitted on impeachment charges, President Clinton announced he would send some 4,000 U.S. troops as part of a NATO peacekeeping force in the event of a peace agreement on Kosovo.

•Iraqi media reported that U.S. warplanes attacking two defense sites in Iraq’s southern “no-fly” zone killed at least three civilians.

•Saudi diplomats told U.N. officials Libya had agreed to a Netherlands trial of two suspects in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing.

•Taliban leaders said Osama bin Laden was “missing” from his hideout in southeastern Afghanistan.

Feb. 14: Some 250,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews mobbed the streets of Jerusalem to protest recent liberal Supreme Court rulings, while an estimated 50,000 secular Israelis held a counter-protest.

•In France, Serb and ethnic Albanian negotiators held their first face-to-face meeting but failed to reach an agreement on Kosovo.

•As Russia approved a $160 million deal to provide military equipment to Iraq, Baghdad warned Saudi Arabia and Kuwait not to allow their territory to be used by the U.S. and Britain to launch airstrikes against Iraq.

Feb. 15: Turkey captured Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan as he was being driven from the Greek ambassador’s residence in Kenya to the Nairobi airport.

•Serbian President Milan Milutinovic said his country was willing to make major concessions on Kosovo but would refuse to allow NATO troops to police any agreement.

•In a three-hour meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz failed to gain a commitment that Ankara would no longer allow Turkish air bases to be used to launch U.S. and British attacks on Iraq.

•Iraqi officials said five people had been killed during the latest U.S. and British air strikes in the northern and southern “no-fly” zones.

Feb. 16: Greek embassies throughout Europe were the target of massive and violent Kurdish demonstrations.

•Chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill met with Yugoslav President Milosevic, who reiterated his “negative stand on the presence of foreign troops” in Kosovo.

•In an apparent assassination attempt on President Islam Karimov, at least eight car bombs exploded in the Uzbekistan capital of Tashkent, killing 13 people and wounding at least 80.

Feb. 17: Security guards at Israel’s consulate in Berlin fired on Kurdish demonstrators storming the embassy to protest rumors of Mossad involvement in the capture of PKK leader Ocalan, killing three. In Washington, the State Department issued a worldwide travel warning to American citizens.

•Defense Secretary William Cohen ordered an additional 51 U.S. warplanes to Europe for possible airstrikes against Serbia if Belgrade failed to ratify by the coming weekend the Kosovo peace agreement negotiated at Rambouillet, France.

•U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan sent a letter of assurances to Libyan Col. Muammar Qaddafi regarding the proposed trial in the Netherlands of two Libyan suspects in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing.

Feb. 18: Greek Foreign Minister Theodoros Pangalos, Interior Minister Alekos Papadopoulos, and Public Order Minister Philipos Petsalnikos resigned in the wake of Greece’s role in the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.

•As Turkish helicopters and warplanes bombed Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq, police in Turkey arrested hundreds of Kurdish activists following protests against the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who became the sole prisoner on the isolated island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmara.

•Saying the U.S. was prepared to use force if necessary, President Clinton rejected an extension of the following day’s deadline for Serbian negotiators to accept an interim peace agreement on Kosovo. In Belgrade, Yugoslav President Milosevic refused to meet with U.S. envoy Christopher Hill.

•Israel seized the southern Lebanese village of Arnoun, surrounding it with barbed wire and declaring it part of its self-declared “security zone.”

•U.S. warplanes fired on a Iraqi missile site in the northern “no-fly” zone.

•Jordan’s new King Abdullah told visiting American Jewish leaders that he considered himself a brother of Israel and looked forward to stronger ties with the Jewish state.

•Ending a months-long crisis with Turkey, Cyprus signed a compromise agreement to deploy Russian air-defense missiles it had ordered on Crete instead.

Feb. 19: U.S. warplanes fired two missiles at an Iraqi radar site.

•American officials acknowledged U.S. diplomatic and intelligence efforts on behalf of Turkey’s capture of Abdullah Ocalan.

Feb. 20: U.S. and European sponsors of the Rambouillet conference extended for three days the deadline for Serbian and ethnic Albanian negotiators to accept the interim agreement on Kosovo.

•Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee inaugurated regular bus service to Pakistan, where he was greeted in Lahore by Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

•Shi’i Muslim Iraqis were reported to be rioting in Baghdad and several other cities following the slaying of Iraq’s highest Shi’i spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq Sadr, and his two sons.

Feb. 21: Saying NATO would not bomb Serbia unless only Belgrade rejected an interim peace accord, Secretary of State Albright urged ethnic Albanian leaders to accept autonomy rather than independence for Kosovo and sign the Rambouillet accord.

•U.S. and British warplanes attacked Iraqi military sites in the southern “no-fly” zone.

•The prime ministers of India and Pakistan concluded a two-day summit in Lahore by agreeing on several measures to reduce the risk of war between the two countries.

Feb. 22: As peace talks stalled in Rambouillet, France, renewed fighting between ethnic Albanian rebels and Serb forces broke out in Kosovo, with some 3,000 villagers fleeing their homes and Serb police reportedly beating and harassing international cease-fire monitors.

•As U.S. and British warplanes struck Iraqi targets in three separate raids over the northern and southern “no-fly” zones, exiled opposition groups reported a third day of protests in Iraq following the murder of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq Sadr.

•Three Israeli soldiers were killed and five wounded in clashes with Hezbollah guerrillas in Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon.

Feb. 23: Kosovo peace talks recessed in Rambouillet, to resume March 15.

•U.S. fighters bombed a military installation and a rocket site in Iraq’s “no-fly” zone.

•In a closed session, a Turkish court on the prison island of Imrali formally charged captured Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan with treason.

Feb. 24: The Supreme Court, ruling on the case of the “L.A. 8,” said that aliens in the U.S. illegally have “no constitutional right to assert selective enforcement as a defense against...deportation.”

•Secretary of State Albright told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Yugoslav troops were “getting ready for a spring offensive,” and that “they are subject to NATO strikes.”

•U.S. fighter jets attacked two surface-to-air missile sites located 30 miles from downtown Baghdad.

Feb. 25: Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that Jewish American teenager Samuel Sheinbein, wanted in Maryland for the murder and dismemberment of 19-year-old Alfredo Tello, Jr., could not be extradited to the U.S. because he was a citizen of Israel, where Sheinbein had never lived and where he fled after Tello’s body was discovered.

•Israeli police prevented peace activists from protesting at the West Bank shrine of Baruch Goldstein on the fifth anniversary of Goldstein’s massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers at Hebron’s Ibrihimi mosque.

•China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution extending the stay of U.N. peacekeepers in the former Yugoslav republic, which recently recognized Taiwan.

Feb. 26: As Serbian forces detained international monitors and were reported to be amassing near an ethnic Albanian stronghold in Kosovo, President Clinton and NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana warned Yugoslavia that NATO would not stand idly by in the event of an attack.

•The U.S. and Britain warned they would seek additional sanctions against Libya unless Tripoli turned over within 30 days for trial in the Netherlands two suspects in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

•The day after his conviction in a single court session of kidnapping and raping a 5-year-old boy in Gaza, Palestinian police Col. Ahmed abu Mustafa was executed by firing squad. He had been given a 15-year sentence for the rape and the death penalty for “inciting the public against the Palestinian Authority.”

•Voter turnout was heavy in Iran’s first democratic municipal elections since 1979, with reform candidates winning an estimated 70 percent of the seats.

Feb. 27: Eritrea said it would accept an Organization of African Unity border plan to end recent fighting with Ethiopia.

Feb. 28: Following the second Hezbollah ambush in Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon in a week, killing Brigadier Gen. Erez Gerstein—liaison officer with the proxy South Lebanese Army and the highest-ranking Israeli army officer to be killed in Lebanon since Israel’s 1982 invasion—a radio journalist and two soldiers, Israeli warplanes repeatedly bombed suspected Hezbollah positions in eastern and southern Lebanon and south of Beirut.

•The Pentagon denied Iraqi charges that U.S. warplanes attacking military installations in Iraq’s northern “no-fly” zone had severed an oil pipeline to Turkey, jeopardizing Iraqi oil exports.

•Ethnic Albanian guerrillas and civilians gathered in Kosovo’s central Drenica region to mark the one-year anniversary of the Serb massacre of 24 ethnic Albanians in retaliation for the killing of two Serb policemen which led to the creation of the Kosovo Liberation Army. In southern Kosovo, a Serbian policeman was killed and four wounded, while more than 2,000 ethnic Albanians fled Serb attacks on their villages.

March 1: In the most intense day of attacks in more than two months, U.S. warplanes fired more than 30 laser-guided bombs at air-defense sites in northern Iraq.

•The mandate for the U.N. peacekeeping force in Macedonia expired, following China’s Security Council veto of its extension.

•Palestinian Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer was sentenced in a Brooklyn federal court to life in prison for plotting to bomb a New York City subway train.

March 2: The U.S. and its NATO allies said there were no plans to launch strikes against Yugoslav military targets despite the deployment of heavy weapons and police personnel around Kosovo.

•Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Labor Party challenger Ehud Barak each pledged to withdraw Israeli troops from southern Lebanon within a year of May 17 elections.

•U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said charges that American intelligence agents had infiltrated U.N. weapons inspections teams in Iraq could harm future disarmament efforts.

•Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdulilah Khatib made an official visit to Kuwait, ending the break in relations that had existed since the Gulf war.

March 3: As Turkey criticized the U.S. bombing of Iraq, China told the U.N. Security Council in a closed session that all bombardments of Iraq must end, and the Arab League reversed its position and called on the U.S. and Britain to halt the bombing of Iraq immediately.

•Abd Rahman Zouabi became the first Arab judge to join Israel’s Supreme Court, as a nine-month temporary appointee.

March 4: As Maj. Gen. John Drewienkiewicz, in charge of international monitors in Kosovo, described the situation in the Serbian province as “hugely volatile,” four Serbs, including a police officer on patrol, were killed in northern Kosovo.

•As damage to an Iraqi oil pipeline was repaired, air strikes on Iraq resumed, with British jets attacking a surface-to-air missile site in southern Iraq.

•King Abdullah of Jordan swore in a new 23-member cabinet, appointing Abdul-Raouf Rawabdeh as prime minister.

March 5: At President Bill Clinton’s request, former senator and presidential candidate Bob Dole met in Macedonia with ethnic Albanians to encourage them to sign the Rambouillet peace agreement.

•Shortly after Spanish diplomat Carlos Westendorp fired Nikola Poplasen as president of the Bosnian Serb Republic because of Poplasen’s alleged attempts to unseat moderate Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, U.S. arbitrator Roberts Owen declared the Bosnian city of Brcko a neutral zone under international supervision, removing it from ethnic Serb control and prompting Dodik’s resignation.

•The political wing of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) issued a statement vowing to continue its struggle for independence despite Turkey’s capture of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

March 6: U.S. warplanes struck anti-aircraft sites and communications facilities in northern and southern Iraq.

March 7: Ethnic Albanian rebel leaders met at an undisclosed location to consider the West’s peace plan for Kosovo.

•Bosnian Serb legislators rejected the dismissal of elected President Poplasen by the chief international official in Bosnia and refused to accept Brcko as a neutral city no longer under Bosnian Serb control.

•The U.S. agreed to sell Saudi Arabia sophisticated air-to-air missiles to counter any threat from Iraq and Iran and to expand joint military training to include ground forces exercises.

March 8: Ethnic Albanian rebel leaders agreed to accept the Rambouillet peace plan for Kosovo, giving it autonomy within Serbia rather than independence.

•Qatar held its first election, with women as well as men permitted to vote and run for office.

March 9: As Yugoslav forces battled Kosovo rebels, U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke met with President Slobodan Milosevic for eight hours in Belgrade but failed to convince him to sign the Rambouillet agreement and accept its provision that NATO peacekeepers be deployed in Kosovo.

•As U.S. warplanes bombed air defense sites in northern Iraq for a second day, Qatar told visiting U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen that the air strikes should end and a peaceful solution be reached.

•On his first trip to the West, Iranian President Mohammed Khatami was received with full honors by Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfara and was scheduled to meet with Pope John Paul II.

March 10: Palestinian security forces shot and killed two Gaza teenagers who were among hundreds of demonstrators protesting a security court death sentence of Hamas member Raed al-Attar for the killing of a Palestinian police officer.

•Following a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Cohen, Jordan’s King Abdullah urged Palestinian President Yasser Arafat not to declare an independent state on May 4.

•France convicted in abstentia six Libyan intelligence agents accused of the 1989 bombing of a French jetliner over Africa.

March 11: Russian Foreign Minister Igor Avanov arrived in Belgrade for talks with President Milosevic.

•The House of Representatives, by a 28-vote margin, endorsed the participation of U.S. troops in a NATO peacekeeping mission to Kosovo.

•Retired Mossad agent Yehuda Gil was convicted of embezzlement and of fabricating intelligence reports which led Israel to the brink of attacking Syria.

•Greek special investigators recommended that 18 people face criminal charges for smuggling PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan into the country.

March 12: Kosovo Liberation Army leaders decided to accept the Rambouillet peace plan, three days before talks were scheduled to resume in France.

•U.S. warplanes attacked Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery sites north and northwest of Mosul in the northern “no-fly” zone.

•Right-wing Israeli politicians formed a new bloc led by former Likud member Binyamin Begin and uniting breakaway Likud and National Religious Party members with the Moledet Party.

•A coalition of oil-producing countries agreed to cut production as of April 1 to counter low oil prices.

March 13: As ethnic Albanian leaders departed for a new round of peace talks outside Paris, a wave of terrorist bombs exploded in the northern Kosovo towns of Podujevo and Kosovska Mitrovica, killing seven people and wounding 58 others.

March 14: At U.N.-brokered talks in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban and opposition groups agreed to create a coalition government with a shared executive, legislature and judiciary, and to release 20 prisoners each.

•In the latest attacks since the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, a bomb exploded beneath a truck in Istanbul, killing one person and wounding five, the day after 13 people were killed in a department store firebombing.

•Eritrea accused Ethiopia of launching a new offensive in the fighting between the neighboring countries.

•Citing an unusually dry winter, Israel said it would be forced to cut its water supply to Jordan by 60 percent.

March 15: Following the ethnic Albanian delegation’s acceptance of the Kosovo peace agreement, French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said, “Yugoslav leaders now have their backs against the wall,” as talks reopened at Rambouillet.

•The Kurdistan Workers Party warned foreign tourists not to travel to Turkey.

•Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban rejected the establishment of a coalition government, although not ruling it out in the future.

•U.S. warplanes bombed air defense sites in northern and southern Iraq for a second straight day.

March 16: With heavy tanks and thousands of additional troops moving into Kosovo, Serbian forces advanced on ethnic Albanian villages in the mountainous Cicavica region. Meanwhile, an independent report by Finnish forensic experts found that 40 ethnic Albanian villagers from Racak killed in January had been unarmed civilians murdered execution-style.

•The first commercial bus service between Pakistan and India in more than 50 years left Lahore for New Delhi with 20 passengers.

March 17: As Serb troops closed in on the Cicavica mountain region, the Clinton administration warned Belgrade against blocking a settlement on Kosovo.

•Violating U.N. sanctions, an Iraqi cargo plane flew 110 hajj pilgrims to Saudi Arabia.

March 18: Ethnic Albanian representatives signed the Rambouillet accord on Kosovo in a ceremony boycotted by the Serb delegation.

•Fighting was reported to have broken out north of the Afghan capital of Kabul.

March 19: As the Kosovo talks at Rambouillet were adjourned and international peace monitors were ordered to leave Yugoslavia, President Clinton told a White House news conference that the “threshold has been crossed.”

•Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik agreed to implement the decision placing Brcko under joint Serb and Muslim-Croat Federation control.

•Libya said it would turn over the two suspects in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 by April 6 for trial in the Netherlands.

•U.S. warplanes bombed Iraqi military targets in the southern “no-fly” zone.

•Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon revoked special travel permits for Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, Faisal Husseini and Ziad abu Ziad after the three Palestinian leaders met with an EU delegation at East Jerusalem’s Orient House.

March 20: Hours after President Clinton’s warning, Yugoslav troops and Serbian police launched two offensives in northern Kosovo, causing thousands of ethnic Albanians to flee their homes.

•An international war crimes investigation recommended that three Croation generals—Mirko Norac, Ante Gotovina and Ivan Cermak—be indicted for “ethnic cleansing” and other war crimes committed during a 1995 assault against Serbs. Meanwhile, Bosnian Serb hard-liners rejected their prime minister’s acceptance of the joint control of Brcko.

March 21: President Clinton sent special envoy Richard Holbrooke to deliver a final warning to Yugoslav President Milosevic. In Kosovo, four Serbian police officers were killed at a checkpoint in the capital, Pristina, after government forces attacked Prekaz, the KLA’s mountain headquarters.

•Israel’s High Court of Justice authorized the deportation of some 600 bedouin to the Sinai Peninsula, which they had fled to escape a tribal feud.

•A bomb slightly damaged an Iraqi pipeline in southeastern Turkey during Kurdish new year festivities.

•First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, arrived in Cairo on the first stop of a North African tour to include Morocco and Tunisia.

•The wife of Jordan’s King Abdullah, Rania, was named queen. Queen Noor, widow of King Hussein, retained her title.

March 22: NATO allies authorized Secretary-General Javier Solana to launch airstrikes against Serbian forces routing ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, as the KLA urged NATO to attack.

•Pakistan and India exchanged civilian prisoners for the first time in nearly a decade.

•Former hostage Terry Anderson sued the government of Iran which, he alleged, controlled the Hezbollah radicals who held him captive in Lebanon for 2,454 days .

March 23: Saying, “We must halt the violence and bring an end to the humanitarian catastrophe now unfolding in Kosovo,” NATO Secretary-General Solana ordered airstrikes on Serbia, as American envoy Richard Holbrooke failed to convince Yugoslav President Milosevic to sign the Rambouillet agreement. By a vote of 58-41, the Senate authorized U.S. participation in a NATO attack.

•Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, en route to Washington for a round of official meetings, ordered his plane turned around over the mid-Atlantic and returned to Moscow when Vice President Gore could not guarantee that there would be no attack on Yugoslavia while Primakov was in the U.S.

•At a White House meeting, President Clinton urged Palestinian President Arafat not to declare a Palestinian state on May 4.

•OPEC agreed with four independent oil-producing countries to reduce petroleum output by 2.1 billion barrels per day.

March 24: The NATO offensive on Yugoslavia was launched with attacks on the Kosovo capital of Pristina, the Serbian cities Belgrade and Novi Sad, and Montenegro.

•A Turkish state security court ruled that PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan must stand trial on Imrali, the Sea of Marmara island where he was imprisoned.

•Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir resigned from the Likud Party to join the new right-wing Herut coalition headed by Benny Begin, son of Shamir’s Likud predecessor as prime minister, Menachem Begin.

March 25: Ethnic Albanian sources reported that, with the onset of NATO strikes, Yugoslav and Serb forces had intensified their attacks in Kosovo, resulting in tens of thousands of refugees fleeing to neighboring Albania and Macedonia.

•Arab Knesset member Azmi Bishara, a Christian from Nazareth, announced his candidacy for Israeli prime minister.

March 26: The European Union, meeting in Berlin, agreed to consider recognizing a Palestinian state “in due course.”

March 27: As NATO attacks widened, U.S. forces rescued an American pilot whose F-117A Stealth fighter crashed during airstrikes over Yugoslavia.

•The U.N. panel reviewing Iraq’s disarmament record concluded that continued weapons monitoring and inspections were necessary.

March 28: As evidence indicated that Serbian activities in Kosovo were approaching “genocide,” NATO began targeting Yugoslav tanks and ground troops suspected of killing or expelling Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority. Meanwhile, a Russian delegation met in Budapest with U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke before traveling to Belgrade to present a peace plan to President Milosevic.

•Imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan issued a call for “the political and democratic participation of the Kurds” in Turkey and other countries.

March 29: Russian President Boris Yeltsin sent Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov to try and convince Yugoslav President Milosevic to return to the negotiating table.

•NATO officials charged that President Milosevic was trying to establish Kosovo as a Serb-only enclave, citing the more than 500,000 ethnic Albanians, about one-fourth of Kosovo’s population, reported to have been displaced in the largest population shift in Europe since 1945.

•Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered the closure of the Orient House and two other Palestinian Authority institutions in East Jerusalem.

March 30: NATO rejected President Milosevic’s offer to withdraw some Serb forces from Bosnia and his demand that air strikes stop before peace talks resume. Meanwhile, after detaining them for several hours, Yugoslav police expelled three American correspondents.

March 31: As Serb forces were reported to be shelling ethnic Albanian villages, towns and cities across Kosovo, three American soldiers patrolling the Macedonian border as part of the international peacekeeping mission there were captured by or turned over to Serbian authorities.