November 1991, Page 51

Facts for Your Files: A Chronology of US., Mideast Relations

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Aug. 1: Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir announced that Israel would participate in a Mideast peace conference, providing it approved members of the Palestinian delegation. Secretary of State Baker called Israel's acceptance "the yes we were hoping for."

Aug. 2: Secretary of State Baker met with Palestinian leaders Zakariya Al-Agha, Hanan Ashrawi and Faisal Husseini, but failed to agree on the composition of a Palestinian delegation to a Mideast peace conference.

Aug. 3: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported that Iraqis are experiencing widespread childhood malnutrition and facing the possibility of famine.

Aug. 4: The Israeli Cabinet approved Prime Minister Shamir's conditional agreement to participate in a Mideast peace conference. El Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto staged a 12-hour hunger strike, charging the conservative Islamic government with trying to destroy her Pakistan People's Party.

Aug. 5: UN officials reported that Iraq had admitted conducting biological weapons research but denied producing any weapons.

Aug. 6: The Lebanese pro-Iranian group Islamic Jihad sent a message with a photo of hostage Terry Anderson to UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, saying it would send "a special envoy carrying an extremely important message" within 48 hours.

Aug. 7: Turkey established a three-mile buffer zone in northern Iraq in response to crossborder raids by the Turkish separatist Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK).

Aug. 8: The pro-Iranian Lebanese group Islamic Jihad released British hostage John McCarthy, who had been held for five years.

• Israel said it would free its Lebanese hostages in exchange for the return of or information on seven Israeli soldiers missing since its 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
  
  
• Shahpur Bakhtiar, Iran's last prime minister before the Islamic revolution, was stabbed to death at his home outside Paris.
  
  
• Iraq showed UN inspectors 17.6 pounds of irradiated uranium it admitted having hidden from previous inspection teams.

Aug. 10: PLO President Yasser Arafat gave conditional agreement to a proposed Mideast peace conference, stipulating that Palestinians choose their own representatives and Israel cease its settlement activity in the occupied territories.

Aug. 11: US hostage Edward Tracy, held captive in Lebanon for nearly five years, was released by the Revolutionary Justice Organization, as was French relief worker Jerome Leyraud. Leyraud was freed only three days after he was seized by a previously unknown organization. US President Bush praised Iran for its help in obtaining the hostages' release and reiterated that Israel should free Arab prisoners it is holding without trial, including Lebanese Shi'i cleric Sheikh Obeid.

Aug. 14: Israeli negotiators meeting with UN Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar in Geneva rejected suggestions that Israel release some of its 375 Lebanese Shi'i hostages as a gesture of goodwill.

• Pakistan, celebrating 44 years of independence, observed an orderly transfer of military power, with the retirement of its army chief, Gen. Aslarn Beg, and the succession of Gen. Asif Nawaz to the post.

Aug. 15: Two Israeli human rights groups, B'Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, charged that Israeli military authorities were resuming the expulsion of Palestinian wives who had come to live with their husbands in the occupied territories.

• The UN Security Council voted to allow Iraq to sell up to $1.6 billion in oil, but required that one-third of the revenue go towards war reparations.

Aug. 17: The Lebanese government, following a heated cabinet meeting, issued a general amnesty for war crimes, clearing the way for Maronite Christian Gen. Michel Aoun, who fled to the French Embassy following his defeat by government forces in October 1990, to leave the country for political asylum in France.

Aug. 19: A coup by Communist Party hardliners against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who was placed under house arrest at his vacation home in the Crimea, cast into doubt plans for a US-Soviet sponsored fall Mideast peace conference.

Aug. 21: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak urged that curbs be applied against Saddam Hussain so that economic sanctions against Iraq could be lifted. In Baghdad, a UN team concluded its inspection of Iraqi chemical weapons, saying it received full cooperation from Iraqi officials.

Aug. 22: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was freed and escorted safely back to Moscow by agents of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who thwarted a right-wing coup with the help of loyal army units and thousands of Moscovites who blocked streets leading to the Parliament building in which Yeltsin had barricaded himself.

Aug. 24: Israeli Housing Minister Ariel Sharon accused the US of reneging on a promise to give advance guarantees to Israel on the composition of a Palestinian delegation to the proposed peace conference. In Amman, Jordan's King Hussein met with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat without reaching agreement on a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation.

Aug. 27: The US postponed withdrawal of its last troops from Kuwait, saying a "deterrent presence" was needed while Kuwait rebuilds its army.

Aug. 28: A November Middle East water summit planned for Istanbul was reported to be in doubt when its host, Turkey's President Turgut Ozal, informed US President Bush that "Syria and other Arab states" would not attend if Israel were invited.

Aug. 29: After receiving a guarantee of safe passage by Lebanese President Elias Hrawi, Christian General Michel Aoun was secretly transported from the French Embassy in Beirut to asylum in France.

Sept. 1: Lebanon and Syria signed a security agreement calling for coordination on all military and security matters, intelligence sharing and extradition of fugitives.

Sept. 3: Israeli officials said they would submit a formal request for $10 billion in US housing loan guarantees within a few days.

• Defying the terms of his amnesty, exiled Lebanese General Michel Aoun called on his countrymen to reject the Hrawi government.

Sept. 4: US Secretary of State James Bak6r said the Bush administration would ask Congress to delay action on Israel's request for $10 billion in loan guarantees in order "to ... not undercut" a possible Mideast peace conference.

• The Israeli cabinet voted to increase the 1992 defense budget by $270 million, a 6 percent increase over the current level of $4.5 billion, approving a total budget deficit of $3.7 billion. Finance Minister Yitzhak Modai, who opposed the military increase, said the $39 billion budget includes the first $2 billion installment of a requested $10 billion in US housing loan guarantees.
  
  
• The US and Kuwait initialed an agreement outlining a 10-year security pact between the two countries.

Sept. 5: Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate Appropriations foreign aid subcommittee, indicated he would support a delay in considering Israel's request for $10 billion in housing loan guarantees.

Sept. 6: Hours after US President Bush told reporters that "It is in the best interest of the peace process and of peace itself that consideration of this absorption aid question for Israel be deferred for simply 120 days," Israeli Ambassador Zalman Shoval delivered Israel's $10 billion request to Secretary of State Baker.

Sept. 8: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said that the proposed US delay in granting housing loan guarantees could make the Mideast peace process "impossible."

Sept. 9: UN humanitarian representative Sadruddin Aga Khan reported that serious clashes had taken place in northern Iraq between Kurdish and Iraqi forces following Kurdish raids on Iraqi army garrisons.

Sept. 10: Meeting with Senate leaders, President Bush offered to seek no further delays in considering Israel's $10 billion loan guarantee request beyond an initial 120 days.

• Iraq refused to allow UN inspectors to fly over its territory in non-Iraqi aircraft.
  
  
• Lawyers for Jonathan Jay Pollard, convicted in 1987 of spying for Israel, appeared before a DC Circuit Court of Appeals panel seeking to withdraw his guilty plea and secure a reduction in his sentence of life imprisonment.

Sept. 11: President Bush angrily denied a report from Israel that he had broken a promise to Israel by requesting a delay in considering Israel's request for loan guarantees.

• Israel released 51 Lebanese hostages and the bodies of 9 others in response to word that one of its missing soldiers was dead.
  
  
• US Army officials acknowledged that hundreds or thousands of Iraqi soldiers were buried alive in their trenches by bulldozers clearing the way under fire for the advance of US forces into Iraqi-occupied Kuwait.

Sept. 12: As hundreds of pro-Israel activists from all over the US lobbied Congress, President Bush described himself as "one little guy" pitted against "a thousand lobbyists" on the Hill today. He vowed, nevertheless, that he would veto any loan guarantee legislation passed before next year. Asked if he would agree in advance to support the guarantees if Congress postponed consideration for 120 days, he responded, "absolutely not."

• Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said Israel would seek economic assistance from the European Community, although he said that EC members were "not sufficiently objective" to play a larger role in the Mideast peace process.
  
  
• The remains of one of its soldiers missing in Lebanon were returned to Israel by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in exchange for Israeli permission for the return to the West Bank Of Ali Abdalla Mohammed Hallal, a Democratic Front activist deported in 1986.

Sept. 13: Israeli Prime Minister Shamir said he saw "no reason to change our position" on settlements in the occupied territories.

• The United States and Soviet Union agreed to end arms shipments to Afghanistan by the end of the year and asked for UN supervision of a transition to free elections.

Sept. 14: Iraqi President Saddam Hussain dismissed Prime Minister Saadoun Hamadi, a Shi'i advocate of political pluralism, replacing him with protege and former Minister of Communications and Transport Mohammed Haniza Al-Zubaidi.

Sept. 15: In a cabinet meeting, right-wing Israeli cabinet minister Rehavarn Ze'evi reportedly called US President George Bush a liar and an anti-Semite for seeking to delay housing loan guarantees.

Sept. 16: In Jerusalem, US Secretary of State Baker met with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and with Palestinian representatives, providing both parties with documents outlining US assurances on a proposed peace conference.

• Iraq agreed to allow UN helicopters to fly over its territory providing Iraqi "specialists" were on board.

Sept. 17: Following a second meeting between US Secretary of State Baker and Israeli Prime Minister Shamir, Israeli officials indicated they would accept a 120-day delay in considering their loan guarantee request if they were assured they would receive the guarantees at the end of that time. In Damascus, where Secretary Baker met with Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Charaa said that if the United States grants the loan guarantees to Israel, "then that will be a major obstacle to peace. "

Sept. 18: President Bush said the US is prepared to send warplanes to protect UN helicopters inspecting Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons arsenal.

• A senior adviser to Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohammed Javad Larijani, predicted that all 10 Western hostages being held in Lebanon would be freed within 2 months.

Sept. 20: Following the refusal, thought to be on PLO orders, by three West Bank Palestinian representatives to meet with US Secretary of State Baker in Amman, one of the three, Hanan Ashrawi, agreed to the meeting, saying she had been authorized by the PLO to seek clarification on the Palestinians' role at a proposed Mideast peace conference. She was driven to the meeting by US Consul General in Jerusalem Molly Williamson.

• The Israeli parliament approved $6.5 million in new infrastructure expenditures for Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, as the government confirmed plans for a new settlement in Arab East Jerusalem.
  
  
• The US and Kuwait signed a two-year agreement providing Kuwait up to $2 billion in Export-Import Bank guarantees.

Sept. 23: In an opening address to the UN General Assembly, President Bush called for the repeal of the 1975 "Zionism is a form of racism" resolution.

Sept. 24: After inaugurating a new Jewish settlement abutting Israel's border with the West Bank, Prime Minister Shamir declared, "the term 'Green Line' [demarcating Israel's pre- 1967 borders] doesn't exist."

• British hostage Jack Mann was released by his Lebanese captors. Israeli hostage negotiators said they would release additional Arab prisoners only in return for information about missing Israeli soldiers.

Sept. 25: US Secretary of State James Baker met with Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy in New York, amid reports that Israel would no longer fight a delay in considering $10 billion in US housing loan guarantees.

• Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati denied that Iran had met with 1980 Reagan presidential campaign officials to negotiate Iran's detaining US embassy hostages until after the 1980 election in exchange for future US arms sales.

Sept. 26: The White House made public a letter from President Bush to Jordan's King Hussein restoring $21 million in US military aid to Jordan.

Sept. 27: Iraq agreed to release a 44-member UN inspection team detained for four days on their buses in a Baghdad parking lot, after reaching an agreement with the UN whereby Iraq would receive an inventory of all the documents being removed.

Sept. 28: At the closing session of its weeklong meeting in Algiers, the Palestine National Council voted to endorse current efforts for a Mideast peace conference and a statement of prerequisites for Palestinian participation. In another action at the meeting, Mohammad Abu Abbas, head of the Baghdad-based Palestine Liberation Front, was dropped from the PNC.

Sept. 30: Afghan rebels said they launched a major offensive in eastern Afghanistan using Iraqi military equipment captured and supplied by the Gulf war allies.

• The UN acknowledged that, during the first two days of their detention in a Baghdad parking lot, UN inspection team members briefed US officials in Washington by phone on the contents of documents relating to Iraq's nuclear weapons program.