Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 1997, Pages 102-104

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

Compiled by Janet McMahon

June 1: Following a meeting with the Bosnian Serb leadership at which she criticized their failure to live up to the terms of the Dayton accords, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright ceremonially opened a bridge leading from Bosnia to Croatia over the Sava River.

•Turkish President Necmettin Erbakan, under increasing pressure by his country's military to abandon his Islamist policies, agreed to call early elections.

•In return for assurances that he would work with President-elect Mohammad Khatami, Iran's parliament re-elected as speaker Ali Akbar Nateq-Nour, the hard-line cleric defeated by Khatami.

June 3: Retired army chief Ehud Barak was elected head of Israel's Labor Party.

June 4: On the eve of the 30th anniversary of the Six-Day War of June 5 through 10, 1967, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu outlined to his security advisers his concept of a future peace settlement, including full Israeli control of "Greater Jerusalem" and clusters of West Bank Jewish settlements, as well as of the Jordan Valley, water resources and key roads. No mention was made of a future Palestinian state.

•President Bill Clinton appointed as special envoy for Cyprus Richard Holbrooke, the former assistant secretary of state for Europe instrumental in drafting the Dayton accords ending the Bosnian civil war.

•The U.N. Security Council extended for a second six-month period the oil-for-food deal whereby Iraq uses proceeds from oil sales to purchase food and medical supplies.

June 5: Algeria held its first multi-party parliamentary elections since 1992, when voting was cancelled by the military in the face of an impending victory by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which was banned from the current election. Low voter turnout, episodes of violence and charges of fraud characterized the voting, in which the ruling military-backed National Democratic Rally of President Liamine Zeroual won 155 of the 380 parliamentary seats.

June 7: On the eve of Israeli-Palestinian talks in Cairo, a spokesman for Prime Minister Netanyahu denied reports that Israel planned to freeze temporarily construction of Jewish settlements, including Har Homa in Arab East Jerusalem.

June 8: A U.N. General Assembly committee voted 58-2 (the U.S. and Israel) that Israel should reimburse the U.N. for the $1.7 million in costs resulting from its April 1996 attack on the U.N. peacekeeping compound at Qana, Lebanon.

June 10: Rolf Ekeus, head of the special U.N. commission monitoring Iraqi compliance with terms of the Gulf war cease-fire agreement, said Iraqi officials had harassed U.N. helicopter pilots and forced them to abort scheduled observer missions.

June 11: At a White House meeting, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, emir of Qatar, urged President Clinton to abandon the "dual containment" policy and improve U.S. relations with Iran and Iraq.

•Fearing a military coup, Turkish Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller gave Islamist Prime Minister Erbakan one week to rotate his office to her, a year ahead of the schedule set in their coalition agreement.

•After holding the Afghan city of Pul-e-Khumri for two weeks, Taliban forces were driven out by a coalition of opposition forces.

June 12: As the U.S. House of Representatives passed 406-17 a non-binding resolution calling on President Clinton to reaffirm Jerusalem as the "undivided capital" of Israel, Orthodox Jewish males threw garbage and feces at Conservative Jewish males and females praying together at Jerusalem's Western Wall, and Israeli soldiers and settlers clashed with Palestinians protesting the fencing off of land around a Jewish-only settlement in Gaza.

June 13: Turkish Prime Minister Erbakan agreed to hand over power to Foreign Minister Ciller.

June 14: Israeli troops in Hebron fired tear gas and rubber bullets at Palestinians protesting the U.S. congressional resolution on Jerusalem as the "undivided capital" of Israel. Meanwhile, Netanyahu spokesman David Bar-Ilan rejected a U.N. finding that Israel should pay for damages resulting from its attack on Qana, saying Hezbollah instigated the violence and should be held responsible instead.

June 15: In a meeting in Jeddah, U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen urged Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and Defense Minister Prince Sultan to provide more information to U.S. investigators of the June 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers military residence in Dhahran.

•Turkish Prime Minister Erbakan along with the leaders of Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria and Pakistan inaugurated the Developing 8, or D8, an organization aimed at fostering economic cooperation among its Muslim developing-country members.

•The Israeli Supreme Court upheld Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein's decision not to prosecute Prime Minister Netanyahu on corruption charges.

June 16: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced that special envoy Sir Kieran Prendergast would not be traveling to Israel to investigate Jewish settlements as called for in a General Assembly resolution because of unacceptable conditions Israel imposed on the visit.

•In the absence of Palestinian police, 19 people were injured as clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian demonstrators continued for the third day in Hebron. They included a 12-year-old Palestinian boy and an elderly Palestinian man in serious condition, and Associated Press photographer Heidi Levine, who was thrown to the ground and kicked in the head by a Jewish settler as Israeli soldiers failed to intervene. In Jerusalem, Palestinians including the city's chief Muslim cleric held a rally outside the U.S. Consulate to protest the recent congressional resolution on Jerusalem.

•On his five-nation tour of the Gulf, Defense Secretary Cohen told American troops that the U.S. would continue its tough "dual containment" policy on Iran and Iraq.

June 17: Jordan's Crown Prince Hassan, visiting Washington where Secretary of State Albright announced a $100 million increase in U.S. aid to Jordan to come from the annual appropriations to Israel and Egypt, was quoted in the Jordan Times as calling the funds tainted because the sum is equivalent to the amount authorized to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

•By a vote of 96 to 0, the Senate passed a non-binding resolution calling upon President Clinton to impose sanctions on China for selling advanced cruise missiles to Iran.

•Hani Abdel Rahim Sayegh, the Saudi citizen being held for possible involvement in the Khobar Towers bombing and who has promised to cooperate with Justice Department authorities, arrived in the U.S. after being deported from Canada.

June 18: Calling for early elections, Turkish Prime Minister Erbakan tendered his resignation to President Suleyman Demirel.

•Following a cabinet dispute over currency liberalization, respected Israeli Finance Minister Dan Meridor resigned from the Netanyahu government, saying he could no longer support the prime minister.

•Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and leaders of the Conservative and Reform branches of Judaism agreed to postpone passage of the conversion law, whereby only Orthodox conversions to Judaism would be recognized in Israel, to freeze cases before the Supreme Court and establish a seven-member committee comprising representatives of all three branches to propose alternatives by Aug. 15.

•Saudi dissident Hani Abdel Rahim Sayegh was indicted on one count of conspiracy in return for his agreement to cooperate with the investigation into the Khobar Towers bombing.

June 20: Bypassing Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller, Turkish President Demirel asked Mesut Yilmaz, leader of the secular center-right Motherland Party, to form a new government.

•Israeli soldiers shot and wounded at least 40 Palestinian protesters in Hebron.

June 21: The United Nations Security Council unanimously voted to impose tougher sanctions on Iraq if it does not cooperate fully with U.N. weapons inspections teams by Oct. 11.

June 23: India and Pakistan agreed to include Kashmir on their peace talks agenda.

•U.N. special envoy and former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker convened direct talks on Western Sahara between Morocco and the Polisario Front.

June 24: By a vote of 55-50, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu survived a no-confidence motion in the Knesset.

June 26: Turkey announced the end of Operation Hammer, its 10-week military operation in northern Iraq against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), with more than 3,000 PKK guerrillas and 113 Turkish troops killed.

•PNA security forces in Gaza arrested 10 members of Force 17, the police unit responsible for guarding President Yasser Arafat, in connection with the beating of Palestinian prisoner Nasser al-Abed Radwan, who was in a coma.

June 27: At a Kremlin ceremony, Tajikistan's President Imamali Rakhmonov and Islamic opposition leader Sayed Abdullo Nuro signed an agreement ending four years of civil war.

June 28: Talks between right-wing Israeli Infrastructure Minister Ariel Sharon and top Arafat aide Mahmoud Abbas will continue following a June 16 secret meeting at Sharon's ranch in the Negev, according to Arab MK Abdul Wahab Darawshe.

June 29: Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan said Riyadh would not interfere in the case of Hani Abdel Rahim Sayegh, indicted in the U.S. in connection with the Khobar Towers bombing in Dhahran.

•Baghdad said it would be forced to reduce food rations because of shortages of supplies received under its oil-for-food deal with the U.N.

•Palestinian merchants in Jerusalem shut down their shops and businesses to protest a series of raids on Arab businesses as part of an Israeli tax-collection campaign.

June 30: After establishing a coalition with a small left-wing party and subject to parliamentary approval, Motherland Party leader Mesut Yilmaz took over as Turkey's new prime minister.

•Joining a chorus of criticism of Prime Minister Netanyahu, Foreign Minister David Levy threatened to resign after learning of secret meetings between Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas.

•A U.S. General Accounting Office report found the Gulf war success rate of such high-tech and costly weapons as the stealth bomber, Tomahawk attack missile and laser-guided "smart" bombs to have been overstated, misleading or unverifiable.

July 1: As Palestinians in Gaza City demonstrated at the funeral of Nasser Radwan, fatally beaten by Palestinian Authority security police, Israeli soldiers in Hebron shot and wounded at least 15 Palestinians during protests against a poster which had been pasted on some 20 Arab storefronts depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a pig. Tatiana Susskin, a 25-year-old Jewish woman from Jerusalem, had been arrested three days earlier in connection with the poster and for thowing a rock through the windshield of an Arab car. Meanwhile, a report issued by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel found that discrimination against Israeli Arabs had increased in the year since Binyamin Netanyahu was elected prime minister.

July 3: Three members of Force 17 were sentenced to death by firing squad by a special military tribunal for the beating death of Nasser Radwan, who had told the wife of one of the officers that she should dress more modestly. Two other defendants were acquitted and three received prison terms.

•Israeli undercover police disguised as Palestinians mingled with protesters and hurled stones in Hebron, then jumped seven demonstrators and dragged them away at gunpoint.

July 4: In an attempt to forestall protests after Friday prayers, Israel sealed off the West Bank city of Hebron. Clashes nevertheless erupted after Palestinian demonstrators jeered Fatah street activists attempting to quell renewed clashes with Israeli troops, who fired rubber-tipped steel bullets and wounded at least 25 Palestinians.

•The former Bosnian Serb mayor of Vukovar, Slavko Dokmanovic, arrested by the international war crimes tribunal after being lured to Eastern Slovenia by U.N. troops, pleaded not guilty to the massacre of some 260 Muslim men in 1991.

July 5: One of the 97 members of Egypt's radical Islamic Group on trial for terrorist acts announced a unilateral cease-fire in its anti-government campaign.

•The husband of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Asif Ali Zardari, was indicted along with 18 other people for conspiracy to murder his wife's politically estranged brother, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, who was killed in a police shootout in Karachi in September 1996.

July 7: Bowing to political pressure, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu abandoned his attempt to name Infrasturctures Minister Ariel Sharon as finance minister, naming instead prominent corporate tax attorney Yaakov Neeman. The Likud prime minister then survived a no-confidence resolution in the Knesset, the second in two weeks, by a vote of 48-39.

•Hani Abdel Rahim Hussein al Sayegh, the Saudi dissident indicted in the U.S. on suspicion of being the driver and lookout for the bombers of the Khobar Towers military residence in Dhahran, said he had documents proving he was out of the country at the time of the attack.

•The publisher of the Israeli science magazine Galileo apologized for an illustration of the Virgin Mary with the head of a cow which accompanied an article on cloning in the April issue.

•Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan was declared a sheikh and presented with a ceremonial white turban by the International Islamic Conference meeting in Chicago.

•The former head of Algeria's banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), Abdelkader Hachani, was sentenced to five years in jail for advocating that security forces disobey their officers after military rulers cancelled national elections due to an impending FIS victory in January 1991.

July 8: Greece and Turkey pledged to resolve their dispute over Cyprus in U.N.-sponsored talks beginning today outside New York City.

July 9: At a Nairobi summit, Sudan's Islamist president, Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Bashir, accepted a 1994 declaration of principles as a nonbinding " basis for negotiations" with the southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army. An SPLA spokesman said, "We will not go to talks if...the declaration of principles is not binding."

July 10: NATO-led forces shot and killed former Prijedor police chief Simo Drljaca, who fired on soldiers attempting to arrest him on a sealed indictment for war crimes, and arrested and turned over to the international war crimes tribunal fellow Bosnian Serb Milan Kovacevic, Prijedor's former hospital director.

July 12: By a vote of 281 to 256, Turkey's parliament approved the new secular government of Mesut Yilmaz.

July 13: Israeli soldiers shot and wounded 11 people, including four journalists, as clashes continued in Hebron.

July 14: After a month of violent demonstrations, Hebron was peaceful as Palestinian police and Israeli military officials arranged a cease-fire.

•Rauf Denktash and Glafcos Clerides, the Turkish and Greek leaders of Cyprus, agreed to continue peace talks which resumed last week after a three-year hiatus.

•The international war crimes tribunal in The Hague sentenced Dusan Tadic, a Bosnian Serb convicted of crimes against humanity and war crimes in Prijedor, to 20 years in prison.

•In the town of Baraki, a suburb of Algiers, a bomb exploded in a crowded market, killing some 20 people and wounding around 40.

•In Israel, a temporary bridge built for the Maccabiah Games collapsed, killing two Australian Jewish athletes and wounding 64 people, one of whom later died.

•Israeli soldiers firing rubber-coated steel bullets injured nine Palestinians in Hebron, where Jewish settlers began throwing stones at Palestinian residents following Sabbath prayers.

July 15: For the third time in four months, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution condemning Israel's construction of Jewish-only settlements in disputed territories and hinting at a boycott of products produced there. Only Micronesia joined the U.S. and Israel in opposing the resolution, which was approved by 131 countries, with 14 absentions.

•As the Senate voted 94 to 4 to approve funding for U.S. troops in Bosnia, President Clinton warned Bosnian Serbs not to retaliate against NATO peacekeeping troops following the arrest of one Prijedor official and the conviction of another.

July 16: An American peacekeeping soldier in Bosnia was slightly wounded when he was attacked with a garden-size sickle by an unknown assailant.

July 18: With the approval of its new secularist government, Turkey's trade agreement with Israel went into effect.

July 19: Following further attacks on NATO peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, NATO deployed 11 armored personnel carriers backed by a helicopter near the home of ousted Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic in Pale.

•The Jordanian soldier who shot at a group of Israeli schoolgirls visiting Naharayim Island, killing seven, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

July 20: Although remaining head of the "Republika Srpska," Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic was expelled from the nationalist party by hard-line supporters of former leader Radovan Karadzic, who had named Plavsic to succeed him.

•Palestinian President Arafat ordered the arrest of four security forces members, including a police chief accused by Israel of leading a plot to attack Jewish settlers.

July 21: The Israeli cabinet approved a proposal blocking compensation to Palestinians wounded by Israeli soldiers during the intifada, or to surviving family members of those killed. The proposal, which would reclassify the killing of 1,067 Palestinians and wounding of 18,000 as "war actions," would not apply to the 114 killed and 7,137 injured Israeli Jews.

•Palestinian police discovered and dismantled a Hamas bomb factory in a house in Beit Sahour, arresting three Palestinians.

July 22: As Israeli cabinet secretary Danny Naveh met in Washington with U.S. Middle East coordinator Dennis Ross, Palestinian President Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy met for the first time since April at European Union-sponsored talks in Brussels.

•The Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported the government's earmarking of an additional $25 million to expand Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

July 23: A new Pentagon study concluded that nearly 100,000 American troops, some five times the previous estimate, may have been exposed to nerve gas as a result of the demolition of an Iraqi ammunition depot near Kamisiyyah at the end of the Gulf war.

•In a preliminary vote, the Israeli Knesset passed a bill making any territorial concessions on the Golan Heights contingent on Knesset approval and a national referendum.

July 24: Spokesman David Bar Ilhan said Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu opposed "at this time" the issuance of a permit to American millionaire Irving Moskowitz to build Jewish-only housing in the Ras al-Amoud neighborhood of Arab East Jerusalem, but that Israelis had a right to build anywhere in East Jerusalem.

•Algerian security forces reportedly killed Antar Zouabri, the 26-year-old leader of the extremist Armed Islamic Group.

•U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Gare Smith, investigating reports of discrimination against Christians and other human rights abuses, met in Khartoum with Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Osman Mohammed Taha.

July 25: As opposition troops fought to within 12 miles of Kabul, Afghanistan's Taliban militia, which controls the city, arrested hundred of people believed loyal to the opposition in midnight raids.

July 26: American millionaire developer Irving Moskowitz announced he would not begin construction of Jewish homes in Arab East Jerusalem.

•The Clinton administration decided not to oppose a $1.6 billion natural gas pipeline from Turkenistan across Iran to Europe.

July 28: Air Force chief of staff Gen. Ronald Foglemen announced his resignation in a dispute with Defense Secretary Cohen over the decision not to promote Brig. Gen. Terryl Schwalier, the officer in charge of security at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia when a truck bomb there killed 19 U.S. airmen.

•Israeli and Palestinian negotiators announced a partial resumption of peace talks.

July 29: A special committee of the Palestinian Legislative Council issued a report detailing charges of corruption, including embezzlement and misappropriation of funds, against government ministers. The legislators called for the trial of three ministers and asked President Arafat to dissolve his entire cabinet.

•As U.S. Ambassador Dennis Ross prepared for another trip to the Middle East, Israeli Foreign Minister Levy met in Amman with his Jordanian counterpart, Fayez Tarawneh, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak flew to Damascus and held talks with Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad.

July 30: Israel sealed off the West Bank and Gaza Strip and its troops encircled the seven West Bank cities under Palestinian self-rule following an attack by two suicide bombers with synchronized explosives at Jerusalem's central Mahane Yehuda produce market, killing the two bombers and at least 13 Israelis and wounding more than 150 others.

•U.S. peace talks czar Dennis Ross postponed his trip to the Middle East following the two Jerusalem bombings.

•The State Department lifted its 10-year-old ban on travel by U.S. citizens to Lebanon, replacing it with a recommendation that Americans travel there only on urgent business.

•Hani Abdel Rahim Sayegh, the Saudi dissident deported to the U.S., withdrew his offer of assistance and pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy in the bombing of Khobar Towers.

•In Ankara, Turkish police attacked thousands of demonstrators protesting the government's curtailment of religious education.

July 31: A spokesman for Palestinian President Arafat termed Israel's threat to send troops into Palestinian-controlled territory "a declaration of war."

•Federal agents and New York police arrested Ibrahim Abu Maizar, Lafi Khalil and a third man after a shootout in a Brooklyn apartment, where they found five bombs.

•By a vote of 51 to 1, the Palestinian Legislative Council, which has no legal power, demanded that President Arafat dissolve his cabinet.

•Defense Secretary Cohen defended his decision to block the promotion of Brig. Gen. Terryl Schwalier as a result of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing.