August 1995 Chronology of U.S.-Middle East Relations

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Aug. 1: The U.S. House of Representatives voted 298-128 to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia. The Senate having previously passed similar legislation, also by more than the two-thirds majority required to override a presidential veto, the bill was sent to President Bill Clinton, who had threatened to veto the measure.

*NATO allies agreed that U.N. military commanders in Bosnia could call in air strikes without permission from civilian authorities in New York or Zagreb if Bosnian Serbs attacked the U.N. "safe areas" of Tuzla, Sarajevo or Bihacé.

*Israel initiated a formal request for the extradition of alleged Hamas political leader Mousa Mohamed Abu Marzook, who was detained by U.S. immigration authorities upon his return to the U.S. from Abu Dhabi, and to where he would be deported if Israel's request is denied.

Aug. 2: Saudi Arabia's King Fahd reorganized his 28-member cabinet, replacing 16 ministers and reassigning two. Ali bin Ibrahim al-Naimi, president and chief executive of Saudi Aramco, was named new oil minister, replacing Hisham Nazer, and commerce minister Suleiman bin Abdel-Aziz Sulaim replaced Mohammed Abalkhail as finance and national economy minister.

*During a third day of confrontations, hundreds of Israeli soldiers evicted more than 100 Jewish settlers from a hilltop they had occupied near the West Bank settlement of Efrat.

*Under terms of a new U.S.-Jordanian extradition treaty, Eyad Najim, a Palestinian with a Jordanian passport who had been arrested in Jordan on charges of involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was turned over to American authorities and flown to the U.S.

*Ethiopian authorities named Sharif Abdel Rahman Tawfiq Madani, an Egyptian terrorist killed in a July 1 shootout with Ethiopian police, as the leader of a nine-man team that tried to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa, where he was attending a June 26 Organization of African Unity summit.

Aug. 4: Croatian government troops launched a major offensive against the breakaway region of Krajina, held by rebel Serbs since 1991.

Aug. 5: As tens of thousands of Serbs fled, Croatian troops captured Knin, capital of the Krajina region.

Aug. 7: The Bihacé pocket in northwestern Bosnia, adjacent to the Krajina region of Croatia, was freed from four years of Bosnian Serb siege by a combined assault of the Bosnian and Croatian armies.

Aug. 8: Meeting in the Egyptian resort of Taba, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and PNA President Yasser Arafat agreed on a staged redeployment of Israeli troops from the West Bank.

*The U.S. formally arrested and began extradition proceedings against Mousa Abu Marzook, held since July 25 on charges of involvement in Hamas terrorist operations.

Aug. 9: Two top Iraqi military officials and sons-in-law of Saddam Hussain, Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel Hassan Majeed and Lt. Col. Saddam Kamel Hassan Majeed, were granted political asylum by Jordan's King Hussein after they fled to Amman with their wives and families.

*The U.S. said its spy photographs revealed what appeared to be a mass grave outside the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where thousands of Muslim men and boys have been missing since its capture by Bosnian Serbs.

Aug. 10: President Clinton promised to protect Jordan from any possible retaliation by Iraq following the defection of Saddam Hussain's sons-in-law.

Aug. 11: PNA President Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Peres initialed an agreement on all but the most difficult negotiating issues, including water rights and a continued Israeli police presence in Hebron.

Aug. 13: Israeli settlers who had established an illegal encampment near the West Bank city of Ramallah shot and killed a Palestinian who was among several trying to dismantle the base.

* In what was seen as an attempt to pre-empt possible revelations by Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel Majeed, the architect of Iraq's military program and defecting son-in-law of Saddam Hussain, Baghdad announced that it would reveal military secrets it had been withholding from U.N. inspectors.

*Following private meetings with officials in France, Germany and England, U.S. national security adviser Anthony Lake met with Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kosyrev to discuss new proposals for peace in the Balkans as a result of the successful Croatian offensive in Krajina.

*In Croatia, government forces and Bosnian Serbs exchanged artillery and mortar fire, hitting the historic city of Dubrovnik.

*The decapitated body of Norwegian Hans Christian Ostro, one of five Westerners being held by the Kashmiri separatist group Al Faran, was found in the Himalayan village of Seer. Al Faran demanded that India free 15 jailed Kashmiri militants in return for the release of the remaining hostages.

*Following U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Dublin, Ireland, the rival Iraqi Kurd groups Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan agreed to a temporary cease-fire.

Aug. 14: A team of American diplomats arrived in the Balkans to present a peace plan involving a new division of territory between the Bosnian government and Bosnian Serbs.

*In delayed sanctions against participants in the 1994 accidental shooting down of two U.S. Army helicopters over Iraq, the U.S. Air Force grounded the two F-15 fighter pilots involved, along with three officers on the AWACS radar plane which failed to prevent the attack, and added critical letters of evaluation to the permanent files of the five airmen and two generals overseeing the operation.

Aug. 15: Albania warned Serbia against settling large numbers of refugee Croatian Serbs in Kosovo, a formerly autonomous region of southern Serbia bordering Albania. Ethnic Albanian Muslims constitute 90 percent of the population of Kosovo, which has been the site of frequent ethnic conflict since 1990.

Aug. 16: Rejecting an appeal from Amnesty International to ban torture and mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners, an Israeli ministerial commission renewed for two months authorization for the Israeli secret service to use "physical pressure" when questioning prisoners.

*Israeli military historian Arye Yitzhaki said Israeli soldiers killed Egyptian prisoners of war during the 1967 Six-Day War. Retired Gen. Arye Biro also admitted killing Egyptian prisoners in October 1956.

*Croatia amassed government troops around Dubrovnik in apparent preparation for an offensive against Bosnian Serbs based in Trebinje.

Aug. 17: Citing "unusual training activities" by Iraqi troops and the recent defection of Saddam Hussain's two sons-in-law, the Pentagon announced it would send ships carrying supplies and equipment to the Persian Gulf and might ultimately deploy some 22,000 ground troops.

*Algerian President Liamine Zeroual proposed an Oct. 22-Nov. 13 presidential election campaign period, with elections to be held by the end of the year.

*For the second time in less than a month, a bomb exploded on or near the Paris subway system, injuring at least 17 people. No group claimed responsibility, but French authorities suspected Algerian militants.

Aug. 18: One day after announcing it would threaten NATO air strikes to increase protection of U.N. "safe areas" in Bosnia, the U.N. said it would withdraw virtually all its troops from the "safe area" of Gorazde and rely only on air power to protect the Muslim city.

*An Algerian group, the "GIA [Armed Islamic Group] Central Command," claimed responsibility for the two recent bombings on the Paris metro system.

Aug. 19: Three American diplomats deeply involved in Bosnian peace negotiations—special envoy Robert Frasure, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Affairs Joseph Kruzel, and National Security Council aide S. Nelson Drew—were killed in an accident on the treacherous Mt. Igman road into Sarajevo, the only route into the city due to the Bosnian Serb blockade of the capital's airport.

*U.S. officials announced that semiannual joint military maneuvers with Kuwait would begin within the week, more than a month ahead of schedule.

Aug. 20: Senate Majority Leader and presidential candidate Robert Dole (R-KS) criticized the Clinton administration's new peace plan for Bosnia, saying it made too many concessions to the Serbs.

*After a 10-day closure, Israel reopened its border with the Gaza Strip.

Aug. 21: Hamas claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing of a morning commuter bus in Jerusalem that killed at least five people, including an American, and injured some 100. Israeli Prime Minister Rabin suspended peace talks for two days and closed the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Aug. 22: U.N. inspection team officials said Iraq had admitted to a more extensive biological and germ weapons program than it had previously acknowledged and that, contrary to earlier claims, the weapons were not destroyed until after the Gulf war.

Aug. 23: Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency, announced it had arrested two top organizers and more than 30 members of a suicide bomb-making cell representing "the infrastructure of the military wing of Hamas in the West Bank."

Aug. 24: A 45-minute speech by King Hussein, in which the Jordanian monarch criticized Iraq's policies but said he would keep the border between the two countries open, was broadcast uncensored by Iraqi television.

Aug. 25: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said his country would provide asylum to Saddam Hussain if such a move would help solve Iraq's problems. At the United Nations, Rolf Ekeus, head of the U.N. inspection team for Iraq, said Baghdad had been within one year of its goal to establish a nuclear weapons program when the Gulf war began, and that it was fear of massive U.S. retaliation that prevented Iraq from using its chemical and biological weapons.

Aug. 27: Israel announced it was closing down the East Jerusalem offices of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, the Palestinian Health Council and the Central Bureau of Statistics, all of which have their headquarters in Jericho or the Gaza Strip.

Aug. 28: In the worst attack in 18 months, two mortar shells fired by Bosnian Serbs into the central Sarajevo market killed at least 37 people and wounded 80 more. U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali ordered U.N. military commanders in Bosnia "to take appropriate action without delay."

Aug. 29: NATO warplanes attacked Bosnian Serb positions surrounding Sarajevo and across Bosnia.

Aug. 30: As NATO warplanes bombed Bosnian Serb positions for a second day, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic told a U.S. peace mission that the Bosnian Serb leadership had agreed to let Serbia negotiate on its behalf.

Aug. 31: NATO demanded that Bosnian Serbs remove their heavy weapons from the exclusion zone around Sarajevo and open the airport and major roads leading to the Bosnian capital.

*French police arrested 20 Islamic militants in Lyons and Paris, confiscating weapons and fake travel papers.