September 1995, pgs. 111-113

Facts for Your File: June and July 1995 Chronology of U.S.-Middle East Relations

Compiled by Janet McMahon

June 1: As Western allies discussed the creation of a rapid reaction force and the repositioning of U.N. troops in Bosnia, some 320 of whom were being held hostage by Bosnian Serbs following NATO air strikes the previous week, heavy fighting was reported in the eastern enclave of Gorazde.

*In a report to Congress, the State Department acknowledged that Turkey has used U.S.-supplied weapons in domestic military operations against rebel Kurds "during which human rights abuses have occurred."

June 2: Bosnian Serbs shot down a U.S. F-16 jet flying a routine patrol to enforce the "no-fly zone" over Bosnia. The pilot of the plane, hit by a surface-to-air missile near Mrkonjic Grad, was reported missing.

*At Bosnian Serb headquarters in Pale, some 120 U.N. peacekeepers were released after being held hostage for a week. In Belgrade, special U.S. envoy Robert Frasure resumed his efforts to persuade Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to recognize Bosnia.

June 3:As Bosnian Serbs said they would continue to hold U.N. peacekeepers hostage unless NATO guaranteed an end to air strikes, NATO defense ministers meeting in Paris agreed to create two separate rapid reaction forces to protect U.N. peacekeeping troops in Bosnia, with the U.S. to contribute troops only to assist in any forced withdrawal of the 22,500 U.N. troops in Bosnia.

June 5: Israeli security forces arrested 45 Palestinian Hamas members from East Jerusalem and surrounding villages on charges of plotting a series of terrorist attacks.

June 6: On the eve of Secretary of State Warren Christopher's 13th visit to the Middle East, Israel agreed to hand over all civilian powers to an elected Palestinian government in the West Bank, instead of gradually transferring powers.

June 7: As Bosnian Serbs continued to release hostage U.N. peacekeepers, talks between U.S. special envoy Robert Frasure and Serbian President Milosevic were suspended.

June 8: U.S. Air Force Capt. Scott O'Grady, whose F-16 jet was shot down by Bosnian Serbs, was rescued after spending six days hiding in a pine forest in western Bosnia. His distress signals were picked up by a U.S. aircraft flying overhead, and he was extracted by helicopter-borne U.S. Marines flying from a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Adriatic.

*U.N. peacekeeping troops moved heavy artillery within range of the Serb artillery besieging Sarajevo.

*The House of Representatives voted 318-99 to include an amendment to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia in the American Overseas Interests Act, which reorganizes the State Department, abolishes three foreign affairs agencies, and reduces U.S. foreign aid for 1996 and 1997.

June 9: Meeting at the White House, Vice President Al Gore told Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic that the U.S would not lift the arms embargo on Bosnia unilaterally.

*In a meeting "engineered" by visiting U.S. Secretary of State Christopher, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin travelled to Cairo to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

*Japan, joining Britain, France and Germany, announced it would not participate in the U.S. trade embargo on Iran.

June 10: The U.N. announced it would not conduct any operations in Bosnia without the consent of the Bosnian Serbs.

*Following a three-hour meeting with Secretary of State Christopher in Damascus, Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad agreed to resume Washington talks on security arrangements in the Golan Heights following an Israeli withdrawal.

June 12:Bosnian government drivers in unprotected vehicles brought the first aid shipment in three weeks to Sarajevo. U.N. soldiers escorted the shipment for 80 yards across Sarajevo's airport after the Bosnian drivers had covered 11 miles of the Serb-targeted Mount Igman road into the capital.

June 13: As Bosnian government troops massed some 15 miles outside Sarajevo, prompting speculation about an attempt to break the 38-month siege of the city, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic announced that all but 14 of the remaining 144 U.N. hostages were being freed in return for a U.N. pledge not to call NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serb positions. U.N. officials denied such an agreement but acknowledged that a secret meeting had been held between the French U.N. commander for the Balkans, Gen. Bernard Janvier, and Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic.

*At the U.N., the Clinton administration sought to delay Security Council approval of a rapid reaction force for Bosnia in response to congressional opposition to the cost, of which the U.S. would pay 31 percent.

*Several dozen Orthodox Jewish rabbis held a prayer service at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC and lobbied Congress against providing promised U.S. aid to the Palestinian National Authority.

June 14: An Egyptian judge declared Cairo University Professor Nasser Hamid Abu Zeid an apostate from Islam based on his academic writings and ordered his marriage to a Muslim woman annulled in accordance with Islamic law.

June 15: As government troops outside Sarajevo attacked Bosnian Serb forces with heavy artillery and mortar fire, G-7 leaders meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia called for "an immediate moratorium on military operations."

* Secretary of State Christopher said the Clinton administration would no longer seek to fund a rapid reaction force for Bosnia through the U.N. but would try to find other funding avenues not subject to congressional approval.

June 16: The U.N. Security Council approved the establishment of a 15,000-troop rapid reaction force, comprising British, French and Dutch forces, with funding for the Bosnian operation to be "determined later."

*The Bosnian army cut a key Serb supply route and threatened another in fighting outside Sarajevo.

June 17: PNA President Yasser Arafat proposed that international forces replace Israeli occupying troops in the West Bank and announced that he would join a hunger strike called by Palestinian prisoners demanding their release from Israeli jails.

June 18: Prime Minister Rabin told his cabinet that Israel would not meet the July 1 deadline for a full agreement with the PLO on expansion of Palestinian self-rule. *Following weeks of wrangling with Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy announced he was leaving Likud to form a new party built on his base of support among Israel's Sephardic Jews.

*As Bosnian Serbs released their last U.N. hostages, a shell fired into the Sarajevo suburb of Dobrinja killed seven people waiting in line for water.

June 20:Rolf Ekeus, chairman of the U.N. commission monitoring Iraq's weapons destruction program, told the Security Council that Baghdad's clandestine biological warfare program was larger than previously thought, with part of it unaccounted for.

June 21: As Bosnian Croat forces announced that they were fighting with government troops to lift the Bosnian Serb siege of Sarajevo, top U.N. official Yasushi Akashi wrote Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to assure him that the new U.N. rapid reaction force would not take sides or act differently than other peacekeepers in Bosnia.

June 22: Islamic Jihad and other militant groups blamed Israel's secret services for the drive-by killing of Islamic Jihad leader Mahmoud al-Khawaja in Gaza's Shati refugee camp. Israel neither confirmed nor denied the charge.

* Iran rejected a European Union appeal that it lift the fatwa calling for the death of British author Salman Rushdie.

June 24: Israeli troops fired live ammunition and rubber bullets at Palestinians as thousands demonstrated throughout the West Bank and in front of Orient House in East Jerusalem to demand the release of some 5,000 Palestinians held prisoner by Israel.

*Lebanese Forces militia commander Samir Geagea was convicted of the 1990 killing of fellow Christian warlord Dany Chamoun, his German-born wife and their two sons. Geagea's death sentence was commuted to life in prison at hard labor.

*On the first day of a three-day strike called in Karachi by the militant Mohajir National Movement (MQM) against a rival faction, gunmen killed at least 17 people and protesters set fire to a train and some 30 vehicles.

June 25:Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinian demonstrators near Jneid Prison in Nablus and wounded some 50 others. A suicide bomber in the Gaza Strip slightly wounded three Israeli soldiers near a Jewish settlement.

June 26: Egyptian President Mubarak, in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa for an Organization of African Unity summit meeting, survived an assassination attempt when several gunmen fired on his motorcade as it left the airport to drive into the city. Two of the gunmen were killed in the shootout, as were two Ethiopian police officers. Mubarak returned to the airport and flew directly back to Cairo.

*Mordechai Vanunu, the former technician at Israel's Dimona nuclear facility sentenced to 18 years in solitary confinement for revealing Israel's nuclear program to the London Sunday Times after his conversion to Christianity in Australia, appealed to an Israeli court to overturn the ban on phone conversations with his family and attorney, the censoring of his mail, and the ban on his having a computer in his cell.

*German Chancellor Helmut Kohl agreed to send Tornado aircraft and some 1,500 military personnel to support the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.

June 27: Qatar's Crown Prince Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani took over the reins of power from his father, Emir Khalifa Bin Hamad Al Thani, while the latter was in Europe.

*PNA President Yasser Arafat agreed to a two-stage Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, with Palestinian elections to be held after the first phase.

*The Syrian and Israeli military chiefs of staff met in Washington to resume discussions on security arrangements to follow a peace agreement between the two countries.

*Egyptian President Mubarak implied that Sudan might have been involved in his assassination attempt.

June 28: The Clinton administration informed Congress that it would take $50 million from the current defense budget to help fund the rapid reaction force for Bosnia.

*Bosnian Serbs surrounding Sarajevo retaliated against a government offensive by firing rocket bombs into the capital, killing at least five civilians and wounding dozens of others, including Western journalists, when a bomb hit the downtown television building.

*Egyptian and Sudanese troops exchanged gunfire along their contested Halaib triangle border area.

June 30: PNA President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres held late-night talks in an effort to meet the July 1 deadline for reaching an agreement on expanded Palestinian self-rule.

*The Bosnian government broke off relations with U.N. chief envoy Yasushi Akashi and expressed anger at a statement by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees that Serb shelling might force the closure of the Sarajevo airport, ending the U.N. airlift of relief supplies to the besieged capital.

July 1:Tensions between Egypt and Sudan eased when Mubarak adviser Osama El-Baz said his country would not attack its southern neighbor.

July 2: Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, citing "conceptual differences" about Israeli redeployment, failed to meet the July 1 target date for an agreement.

*U.S. intelligence officials said the Clinton administration is ignoring "incontrovertible" evidence that China has provided M-11 missiles to Pakistan.

July 4: The PLO and Israel reached accord on an outline for an agreement on Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank and for Palestinian elections and expanded self-rule, with the final agreement to be signed July 25 in Washington.

* Egypt's radical Islamic Group claimed responsibility for the recent assassination attempt on President Hosni Mubarak.

July 5:Chairman of the U.N. Special Committee on Iraq Rolf Ekeus told the Security Council that Iraq had admitted producing biological weapons in 1989-90, but said the toxic agents were later destroyed.

July 6: Bosnian Serbs bombarded the eastern U.N. "safe area" of Srebrenica, killing at least six civilians, wounding 11 and causing thousands of residents and 450 Dutch peacekeepers to take shelter.

July 7: A report by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights said human rights abuses were committed by all sides of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, but the Bosnian Serbs were to blame both for by far the most and some of the worst of them.

July 8: In Srebrenica, Bosnian Serb tanks fired at a U.N. observation post, forcing its Dutch peacekeepers to retreat into Bosnian government crossfire, which killed one of the Dutch soldiers.

*Militants in the Indian-occupied portion of Kashmir kidnapped a fifth Westerner, German Dirk Hasert, four days after abducting two Americans, John Childs and Donald Hutchings, and two Britons.

*Somali officials said some 61 people had been killed in the past week in fighting between rival militias.

July 9: U.N. military commanders threatened to call NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces that overran U.N outposts around Srebrenica, taking 30 U.N. peacekeepers prisoner.

* Following an Israeli artillery attack on southern Lebanon that killed two sisters 11 and 16 years old, Hezbollah guerrillas fired Katyusha rockets into northern Israel.

*One of the Americans kidnapped by Kashmiri militants, John Childs, escaped from his captors.

July 10: Bosnian Serb forces defied a U.N. warning and attacked Dutch peacekeepers guarding the entrance to Srebrenica.

*Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin asked the U.S. to intervene and defuse tensions between Israel and southern Lebanon.

*Right-wing Jewish settlers, after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, said their "options stretch as far as civil insurrection."

*Three members of the Iranian opposition group People's Mojahedin were killed by gunmen in Baghdad.

July 11: Less than two hours after limited NATO air strikes, Bosnian Serb forces captured the U.N. "safe area" of Srebrenica, causing some 30,000 civilians and a contingent of 30 to 60 peacekeepers to flee north, and trapping 430 other Dutch peacekeeping troops.

July 12: As the U.N. Security Council demanded that Bosnian Serbs cease their offensive, withdraw from Srebrenica and release detained Dutch peacekeepers, U.N. soldiers looked on as Bosnian Serb forces began expelling thousands of Muslim residents from the former U.N. "safe area."

*As 42 Jewish settlers were arrested for trying to expand the settlement of Efrat and blockade the highway from Jerusalem to Hebron, right-wing Israeli rabbis ruled that Jewish soldiers should disobey orders to vacate West Bank army bases.

*Federal District Judge Michael Mukasey refused to allow defense attorneys for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, charged with conspiracy to blow up New York City landmarks, to call experts on Islamic law to testify on "the government's criminalization of Islam." The judge also denied defense requests to summon Attorney General Janet Reno and New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato.

July 13:As French President Jacques Chirac called on the U.S. and Britain to join in military operations to prevent the loss of other U.N. "safe areas" in Bosnia, President Clinton, speaking to reporters at the White House, said, "Unless we can restore the integrity of the U.N. mission, obviously its days will be numbered."

July 14: Israel and Syria failed to agree on a date for a new round of security negotiations planned to begin in Washington.

July 15: Bosnian government defenders of Zepa and Gorazde, the two remaining U.N. "safe areas" in eastern Bosnia, seized weapons and vehicles from U.N. peacekeepers to defend themselves against expected Bosnian Serb attacks.

July 16: Bosnian Serb forces advanced on Zepa.

*Following a meeting with U.S. Rep. Bill Richardson (D-NM), Iraqi President Saddam Hussain released William Barloon and David Daliberti, who had been held since March 13 for illegally crossing the border from Kuwait into Iraq.

*Newly elected President Jacques Chirac publicly acknowledged French responsibility for the deportation of thousands of Jews to World War II Nazi death camps.

July 19: Bosnian Serbs announced they had captured the U.N. "safe area" of Zepa.

*Egypt arrested 15 leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, including Sheikh Sayed Askar, director of public information at Al Azhar university.

July 20:Israel said it would free 600 to 1,000 of the some 5,500 Palestinian prisoners it holds around the new July 25 deadline for agreement on expanded Palestinian self-rule.

July 21: As Bosnian Serbs continued to shell U.N. "safe areas," the U.S. and its allies, meeting in London, warned that there is "strong support" for "decisive" NATO airstrikes if Bosnian Serbs attack the "safe area" of Gorazde.

July 23: More than 800 British and French troops moved to secure a supply route into Sarajevo and respond to continued heavy shelling of the capital by Bosnian Serbs.

July 24: A Palestinian killed himself and at least five passengers, wounding some 32 more, when he set off a pipe bomb on a bus in a Tel Aviv suburb.

July 25: As the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicted Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his top military commander, Ratko Mladic, on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, thousands of Muslim residents fled Bosnian Serb forces which overran Zepa.

*Israeli and Palestinian negotiators failed to meet the deadline for an agreement on expanded Palestinian self-rule.

*Immigration officials at New York's Kennedy Airport detained Mousa Mohamed Abu Marzook, said to be the head of the political committee of Hamas, as he returned to the U.S. from Dubai. The U.S. filed papers calling for expelling Abu Marzook, and Israel indicated it was considering requesting the U.S. to extradite Abu Marzook from the U.S. to Israel.

*A bomb exploded on a Paris commuter train, killing at least 4 and injuring some 60 other people.

July 26: The Senate voted 69-29 to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia, as NATO officials meeting in Brussels agreed that no large-scale bombing would occur in Bosnia without the approval of U.N. civilian officials.

*Israeli Prime Minister Rabin's Knesset coalition narrowly defeated a bill aimed at blocking a return of the Golan Heights to Syria.

July 27: President Clinton blamed the U.N. for the failure of the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, saying an aggressive air campaign against the Serbs was the "one last chance" to save the effort. Meanwhile, European intelligence was reported to have fueled British and French suspicions that the U.S. was joining Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan in clandestinely arming the Bosnian government.

*Croatian army troops joined Bosnian Croat forces in a major offensive to relieve the siege by Bosnian and Croatian Serbs of the Bihacé pocket in western Bosnia.

July 30: As Palestinian and Israeli negotiators resumed talks on expanded Palestinian self-rule, Israeli police and soldiers evicted hundreds of Jewish settlers who had established an encampment on Dagan Hill in the West Bank. Israel also lifted the week-long closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, imposed after the suicide bombing of a Tel Aviv bus.

*Following a Croatian government threat to invade the Serb-held Krajina region, Serb forces were reported to be returning to that base from their siege of the Bosnian government stronghold of Bihacé.

*Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council order a general amnesty for all Iraqis convicted of political crimes on condition they present themselves to Iraqi authorities.