Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July/August 1999, pages 60-62

Facts For Your Files

A Chronology of U.S.-Middle East Relations

Compiled by Janet McMahon

April 1, 1999: As the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia entered its second week, Serbia announced that it may try three U.S. soldiers captured while on patrol as part of the international peacekeeping force in Macedonia.

• Shortly before midnight, Serbian security and paramilitary troops swept through the southwestern Kosovo city of Djakovica, burning homes and buildings after killing their occupants, shooting at least 55 ethnic Albanians, including 20 women and children found hiding in a pool hall basement.

• In an apparent attempt to consolidate his control over Serbia’s fellow Yugoslav republic, President Slobodan Milosevic removed Macedonia’s army commander and seven other top generals.

• Iraq told the U.N. Security Council hundreds of civilians had been killed in three months of U.S. and British air attacks, with 195 sorties over the northern “no-fly” zone and 511 in the south in the first two weeks of March alone.

April 2: As thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees continued to flee Kosovo, NATO cruise missiles struck government buildings in downtown Belgrade.

• As oil exports resumed through Iraq’s main terminal following repairs to a central communications station destroyed by U.S. and British airstrikes, U.S. and British warplanes attacked targets in southern Iraq in the first such strikes since March 16.

April 3: As its missiles struck downtown Belgrade for a second straight day, NATO announced plans to send 6,000 to 8,000 troops to Albania to help the nearly 200,000 Kosovar refugees there.

April 4: The two Libyan suspects in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah and Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, left Tripoli for trial in the Netherlands. A delegation of Arab and African dignitaries led by Arab League Assistant Secretary-General Ahmed Ben Heli witnessed the suspects’ departure accompanied by U.N. legal counsel Hans Corell.

• As Palestinian President Yasser Arafat met in Amman with Jordan’s King Abdullah one month prior to the May 4 ending date of the Oslo accords and possible declaration of a Palestinian state, a Tel Aviv University “Peace Index poll” showed that a majority of Israelis believe the goal of a Palestinian state is unstoppable and just.

• Israel ordered three Palestinian organizations in Jerusalem—the Palestinian News Agency (Wafa); the Prisoners Club, an assistance organization run by Fatah; and the Arab Muslim-Christian Committee—to close within 12 days.

• At least seven people were injured in Easter Sunday clashes between Muslim and Christian Palestinian residents over a disputed site near the Basilica of the Annunciation in the town of Nazareth.

• The U.S. agreed to accept 20,000 ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo.

April 5: Errant NATO missiles struck two residential neighborhoods in the Serbian mining city of Aleksinac, killing some 10 civilians.

• The first of some 400,000 ethnic Albanian refugees were airlifted from the Balkans to Norway and Turkey.

• The arrival in The Hague and formal turning over of the two suspects in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing triggered the automatic suspension of U.N. sanctions on Libya.

• Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov urged visiting Palestinian President Arafat to defer a May 4 declaration of a Palestinian state.

• Muslim residents of Nazareth demanded the resignation of the town’s Christian mayor.

April 6: The U.S. and its NATO allies rejected President Milosevic’s declaration of an Orthodox Easter cease-fire and intensified its bombing of Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, ethnic Albanians continued to flee their burning houses in Kosovo as Macedonia abruptly expelled some 3,500 refugees, and the U.S. approached Russia to act as a go-between with Milosevic.

• In a brief court session, Scottish police formally charged Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah with the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

• Iraq announced that four men had been executed for the February murder of Shi’i leader Mohammed Sadeq al-Sadr and his two sons.

• Iran’s Supreme Court rejected the appeal of former Tehran Mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi, a moderate ally of President Mohammad Khatami, of his corruption conviction and sentence of two years in prison.

April 7: NATO warplanes bombed a column of 7 to 12 Yugoslav army vehicles amid reports that the government had sealed Serbia’s borders and that tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians who had been backed up in Kosovo had disappeared. Meanwhile, the State Department warned nine Yugoslav commanders that they faced possible prosecution for war crimes.

• Some 15,000 Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq to hunt down Kurdish rebels.

• Algerian security forces killed 19 Islamists, including Abdelkader Rahmouni, the top aide to the leader of the radical Armed Islamic Group.

• Libyan Airlines celebrated the suspension of the U.N. air embargo by flying hajj pilgrims home from Saudi Arabia.

April 8: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright conveyed her displeasure to visiting Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon over the latter’s failure to fully support the NATO attack on Yugoslavia, which Sharon feared might set a precedent for the international community’s dealing with Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

• NATO warplanes attacked Yugoslav soldiers and military convoys in Kosovo.

• U.S. warplanes attacked an Iraqi anti-ship missile site which had been repositioned to the Al Faw Peninsula.

• Iraq rejected the conclusions of three special U.N. panels trying to reach a solution to the current impasse over sanctions.

April 9: Cypriot parliament speaker and former President Spyros Kyprianou met in Belgrade with Serbian President Milosevic but failed to gain the release of three captured American soldiers.

• A Turkish court sentenced 114 intellectuals and human rights activists to one year in prison for signing a 1993 declaration calling for a peaceful solution to Turkey’s Kurdish conflict.

April 10: U.S. F-16s which had been targeted and fired at then attacked radar and anti-aircraft sites in southern Iraq.

April 11: India conducted a surprise test of a new missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.

• Opposition newspaper publisher Slavko Curuvija was shot to death outside his home in Belgrade as he returned with his wife from an Easter lunch.

• Iraq reported that U.S. and British warplanes attacked civilian and military targets in southern Iraq, killing two civilians and wounding nine others in retaliation for anti-aircraft fire and a surface-to-air missile attack on “coalition aircraft.”

• Israeli warplanes fired at least 10 missiles in two raids in southern Lebanon, attacking the village of Mlita and suspected guerrilla targets southeast of Tyre.

April 12: Following an emergency session in Brussels during which they discussed the possibility of deploying ground troops in Kosovo, NATO foreign ministers vowed to intensify their air campaign against Yugoslavia, where NATO warplanes attacked a rail bridge south of Belgrade and struck a passenger train crossing the bridge, killing at least 10 and injuring 16 people.

• Saying, “We have done a lot and we will do a lot more,” Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu praised the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements.

• Two prominent Bosnian Croats, Dario Kordic and Mario Cerkez, went on trial in The Hague for the 1991-94 purging and killing of Bosnian Muslims from their homes in the Lasva Valley.

April 13: As Yugoslav infantry troops crossed into northeastern Albania, seizing control of a border village for several hours before withdrawing, the U.S. and NATO prepared for a major escalation of air attacks on Yugoslavia, including the addition of some 300 warplanes and Apache helicopter gunships and the possible mobilization of 30,000 air reserve units.

• Pakistan test-fired a ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead into India.

• Days before Turkish national elections, baton-wielding police in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir broke up a pre-election rally for the People’s Democracy Party, Turkey’s only legal Kurdish party, detaining some 4,000 people.

• The Khartoum government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army agreed to extend a nine-month-old cease-fire for an additional three months.

April 14: As Yugoslav forces were reported to be stepping up their expulsions of ethnic Albanians, European Union leaders proposed a plan calling for Kosovo to be placed under temporary European administration if President Milosevic agreed to withdraw his troops and allow the return of ethnic Albanian refugees.

• NATO warplanes dropped cluster bombs on a refugee convoy near Djakovica in southwest Kosovo, killing more than 60 ethnic Albanians. Meanwhile, saying, “We’re very cautious about doing anything that would contribute to the destruction of our aircraft,” NATO ruled out relief flights for thousands of refugees inside Kosovo.

• Pakistan tested a second missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

• On the eve of Algerian presidential elections, six of the seven candidates withdrew to protest fraud in early voting, leaving the military-backed Abdelaziz Bouteflika as the only candidate.

• A U.N. committee handling claims against Iraq ordered Baghdad to pay more than $31 million to Israel in compensation for Scud attacks during the Gulf war.

April 15: Shas Party leader and former Interior Minister Arieh Deri, leader of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews and a key Netanyahu ally, was sentenced to four years in prison and fined $60,000 for taking bribes.

• A Pakistan court sentenced former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to five years in jail, fined her $8.6 million and disqualified her from politics on corruption charges.

April 16: The U.N. High Commission for Refugees estimated that more than 700,000 ethnic Albanians had fled Kosovo in the past year and accused Yugoslavia of trying to expel all of the province’s ethnic Albanians, who had made up 90 percent of Kosovo’s population.

• Five Serb rocket-fired cluster bombs, thought to be targeting a nearby KLA base, fell on the outskirts of Kukes, Albania, home to more than 75,000 Kosovar refugees as well as the native population of 20,000. Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced that a Yugoslav army officer captured by the Kosovo Liberation Army was in U.S. custody in the Abanian capital of Tirana.

• As thousands protested in the streets of Algiers and other cities, sole candidate Abdelaziz Bouteflika, with nearly 75 percent of the vote, was declared the winner of the previous day’s presidential election.

• Ethiopian warplanes attacked two towns in southern Eritrea, killing two children when a bomb struck a school.

• Israeli and SLA troops opened fire on journalists approaching the village of Arnoun in southern Lebanon seized by the troops the previous day for`a second time.

April 17: Iraqi officials said four civilians were killed and one injured in U.S. air attacks on antiaircraft sites in northern Iraq.

April 18: Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit’s Democratic Left party won Turkish national elections with some 22 percent of the vote, followed by an unexpectedly strong showing by the nationalist right-wing National Action, which took 18 percent. The Islamist Virtue Party, while re-electing mayors in Istanbul and Ankara, came in a disappointing third with about 16 percent of the vote, while both center-right parties, Motherland and True Path, won 13 and 12 percent respectively. The pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party won 4 percent of the national vote, making it ineligible for a parliamentary seat, but made a strong showing in the southeastern region, winning mayoral races in six cities.

April 19: As Kosovar refugees increasingly reported rapes and killings by Yugoslav forces, Belgrade sent thousands of army and police reinforcements into Kosovo and stepped up the use of helicopters and aircraft. Meanwhile, the Albanian government asked NATO to arm the Kosovo Liberation Army, and the Pentagon acknowledged that NATO strikes had not prevented the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo.

• In their first conversation since NATO began bombing Yugoslavia on March 24, President Clinton telephoned Russian President Yeltsin to urge that Moscow commit troops to an international security force in Kosovo.

• Israel’s Knesset passed a new extradition law allowing Jews who are not Israeli residents to be tried abroad for crimes committed abroad. The law was not retroactive and hence did not affect the case of Samuel Sheinbein, the Maryland teenager who fled to Israel to avoid prosecution for the killing and dismembering of Alfredo Tello.

• U.S. warplanes attacked Iraqi defense sites near the northern city of Mosul.

• Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militia clashed with Shi’i opposition Hezb-e Wahadat forces in heavy fighting west of Kabul.

April 20: As NATO cruise missiles struck a Belgrade building with transmitters for three private radio and TV channels, putting them off the air while the three state TV channels continued to broadcast, hundreds of elite U.S. paratroopers arrived in Tirana to guard Apache helicopters which had yet to reach the Albanian capital.

• Turkish state prosecutors officially asked for the death penalty for captured PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.

• The five-nation panel of military experts monitoring the 1996 agreement between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia not to target civilians failed to agree whether Israel’s occupation of the southern Lebanese village of Arnoun violated the agreement.

• Christian residents of Nazareth accepted an Israeli compromise on the siting of a mosque outside the Church of the Annunciation, in an area the Christian mayor had wanted to use as a parking lot for tourist buses. Muslims who wanted to use the entire adjacent site to erect a new mosque earlier had rejected the Israeli proposal.

April 21: As NATO missiles gutted the official residence of President Milosevic in Belgrade’s wealthy Dedinje district, the first U.S. Apache helicopters arrived in Albania and the Clinton administration agreed to renewed NATO planning for the possible deployment of ground troups in Kosovo. Meanwhile Secretary of State Albright ruled out the partitioning of Kosovo but not the establishment of the province as an international protectorate.

• An Iraqi military spokesman said Western warplanes attacked civilian and military sites in northern Iraq.

April 22: Former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin met for eight hours in Belgrade with President Milosevic, saying afterward that the Yugoslav leader had agreed to accept an international peacekeeping force in Kosovo. Meanwhile, NATO planes attacked the Serbian state television building in Belgrade, causing many casualties and knocking the station off the air in the middle of a newscast.

• Some 12,000 supporters of President Milosevic rallied in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica to demand that the Yugoslav republic’s police submit to army control.

• As the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the Interior Ministry to provide detailed information on why it had revoked the Jerusalem residency permits of hundreds of Palestinians over the past two years, the Netanyahu government announced it would close Palestinian Authority offices in East Jerusalem’s Orient House.

• Iraq said one person was killed and four wounded in U.S. attacks in northern Iraq.

• Libya’s state airline made its first scheduled overseas flight, to Amman, Jordan, since the lifting of U.N. sanctions.

• Russian S-300 missiles ordered by Cyprus arrived in Crete, where they were to be stored as part of a compromise following strong Turkish objections.

April 23: NATO leaders, in Washington to observe a subdued 50th anniversary summit, agreed to impose an oil embargo on Serbia, as the Pentagon announced it was sending armored combat units to Albania to back up Apache helicopters.

• Yugoslav Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic ruled out an armed international presence to enforce a possible peace agreement in Kosovo.

• In its first official statement on Kosovo since its observers were evacuated March 20 prior to NATO bombing, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said testimony and evidence it had gathered showed that Serbian paramilitary forces and bands of armed civilians had raped, killed and mutilated ethnic Albanians during the past month.

• As some 300 Lebanese students demonstrated in front of U.N. headquarters in Beirut to protest Israel’s reoccupation of the southern Lebanese village of Arnoun, Israeli warplanes fired at targets in southern Lebanon, wounding three villagers, and Hezbollah guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb, killing an SLA militiaman and wounding two others.

April 24: Taliban fighter jets attacked opposition Hezb-e-Wahadat positions in Afghanistan’s central Bamian province.

April 25: NATO leaders pledged to defend against a possible Yugoslav attack on any of the seven “front-line” states—Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina—should the war in the Balkans spread. The men also agreed to lead a major post-bombing reconstruction effort in southeastern Europe to rebuild what they had destroyed.

• The Kosovo Liberation Army held a news conference in the border town of Kukes, Albania, to say it was still fighting Yugoslav forces in Kosovo and to support its bid for a military alliance with NATO.

• Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called on the U.S. to set a new deadline for the conclusion of the peace process in return for a Palestinian agreement not to declare a state on May 4, when the Oslo agreement is scheduled to be completed.

• Former Shin Bet informer Avishai Raviv was indicted for failing to tell his supervisors about Yigal Amir’s threats to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

• In two hit-and-run attacks, Indian soldiers invaded a Pakistani village and fired mortar shells into the Pakistani side of the line of control in Kashmir, wounding at least 15 civilians.

• U.S. warplanes attacked Iraqi air defense sites near the northern city of Mosul.

April 26: In a letter to Palestinian President Arafat, President Clinton urged a one-year extension of the Oslo peace process and pledged to push harder for a final settlement with Israel.

• As Yugoslav President Milosevic agreed to allow the Red Cross to visit briefly three captured American soldiers, the U.S. and its NATO allies agreed to support a Russian peacekeeping effort in Yugoslavia.

• In Belgrade, Deputy Prime Minister and former opposition leader Vuk Draskovic called for his government to accept a U.N.-authorized multinational peacekeeping force that would include NATO troops, and vowed to lead new street protests against the Milosevic regime if military control over Studio B television were not lifted.

• Following the electoral victory of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party, Kurdish rebels vowed to intensify their war against the Turkish government.

• Egyptian authorities released hundreds of members of the militant Islamic Group, which had announced in March that it would lay down its arms. Thousands of suspected members remained in prison.

April 27: As NATO bombs struck a residential district in the southern Serbian town of Surdlica, killing at least 16 civilians, and President Clinton authorized the Pentagon to summon up to 33,102 reservists for active duty with NATO forces in Yugoslavia, NATO military commander Gen. Wesley Clark acknowledged that five weeks of massive bombing had failed to reduce the size of the Yugoslav force in Kosovo or its “cleansing” of the ethnic Albanian majority.

• In Belgrade, Goran Matic, minister without portfolio in the Milosevic government, said, “I believe that this will be the week in which the basic outline of an agreement on Kosovo can be firmed up.”

• Iraq said U.S. and British warplanes attacking public utilities and weapons sites near Mosul killed four civilians.

• Abdelaziz Bouteflika was sworn in as president of Algeria.

April 28: As President Clinton indicated that the bombing of Yugoslavia might continue for at least another three months, the House of Representatives voted 249 to 180 to bar the sending of ground troops to Yugoslavia without congressional approval and, by a tie vote, refused to support NATO air strikes against Serbia.

• Yugoslav President Milosevic fired Deputy Prime Minister Vuk Draskovic, while some 40 NATO missiles struck the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica.

• U.N. officials said the most recent Kosovar refugees entering Albania were giving consistent reports of what appeared to be a mass execution of more than 100 ethnic Albanian men near the city of Djakovica.

• The Clinton administration announced an easing of sanctions on the sale of food and medical supplies to Iran, Libya, Sudan and other countries accused of supporting terrorism.

April 29: As Russian peace envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder met in Berlin to discuss the composition of a future international peacekeeping force in Kosovo, an errant missile fired by a NATO warplane struck a house in a suburb of the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. There were no injuries.

• Meeting in Gaza, the PLO’s Central Council voted to defer a May 4 decision on Palestinian statehood until after Israel’s May 17 election.

• Israel announced it would proceed with the construction of an illegal Jewish settlement at Har Homa/Jabal Abu Ghneim near Bethlehem in Palestine’s West Bank territory.

• Israeli police recommended the indictment of Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon on bribery and fraud charges for agreeing in 1997 to help businessman Avigdor Ben-Gal clinch a multimillion-dollar natural gas deal with Russia in return for Ben-Gal’s false testimony in Sharon’s libel suit against an Israeli newspaper.

• Turkey announced it would allow individual but not official observers to attend the upcoming trial of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. Meanwhile, 10 Kurdish guerrillas and six security force members were killed in clashes in southeastern Turkey.

• Iranian President Khatami, inaugurating the newly elected Tehran city council, criticized his conservative opponents and pledged to pursue his reform platform.

• U.S. F-16 fighter jets attacked anti-aircraft artillery and command and control sites near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

April 30: The Rev. Jesse Jackson met in Belgrade with three U.S. soldiers held captive by Yugoslavia.

• As NATO bombed residential areas of Belgrade for the first time, Yugoslav President Milosevic, in a UPI interview, again rejected a NATO military presence in Kosovo as part of a peace agreement but said the U.N. “can have a huge presence if it wishes.” NATO rejected a similar proposal offered following Milosevic’s meeting with Russian envoy Chernomyrdin.

• The State Department’s report on global terrorism again listed Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria as sponsors of terrorism, but no longer described Tehran as “the most active” sponsor.