November/December 1994, Pages 102-104

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

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Aug. 1: PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, citing Israel's recent acknowledgment of Jordan's "special status" in Jerusalem, demanded that the issue of Jerusalem be negotiated immediately in Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

* Defying Russia and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Bosnian Serbs rejected for the third time the international plan for the partition of Bosnia.

* Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres responded favorably to a Clinton administration request that Israel "take part in peacekeeping efforts" in Haiti upon the restoration to power of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

* Lebanese President Elias Hrawi accused Israel of falsely blaming Lebanon for recent bombings in Buenos Aires and London, and called the Iran-backed Hezbollah's resistance to the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon "legitimate."

Aug. 2: Yasser Chraidi, the prime suspect in the 1986 bombing of a Berlin nightclub frequented by American servicemen, was freed from a Lebanese prison, where he was being held on other charges. He was freed after Germany was unable to extradite Chraidi because the U.S. had failed to respond to year-old German requests for incriminating evidence against him.

Aug. 3: The self-styled Bosnian Serb parliament voted unanimously to hold a referendum on the international plan for the partition of Bosnia.

* As Turkish warplanes bombed a suspected Turkish Kurd rebel camp in northern Iraq, six ethnic Kurds elected to the Turkish parliament in 1991 were put on trial in Istanbul for speaking out for Kurdish political rights and on charges of accepting directives from an outlawed Syrian-based Kurdish rebel leader.

Aug. 4: Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic announced that Serbia was breaking all political and economic ties with the Bosnian Serbs and tightening its border with Bosnia.

* On the eve of a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Israel apologized for killing eight Lebanese civilians during an air raid on the southern Lebanese town of Deir Zahrani.

* A day after the Iranian parliament's denial of the city of Qazvin's request to secede from Zanjan province led to riots, the government agreed to allow the city to join Tehran province.

* Five French citizens were killed by a carload of gunmen attempting to plant a bomb in a French neighborhood in Algiers.

Aug. 5: After British U.N. commander Lt. Gen. Michael Rose warned Bosnian Serb forces to remove themselves from the area, U.S. warplanes attacked an antitank vehicle removed from a U.N. weapons-collection point by Bosnian Serb troops.

* Martial law was imposed on the Iranian city of Qazvin following a second day of riots.

Aug. 6: At a meeting in Alexandria, Egypt en route to Jerusalem, U.S. Secretary of State Christopher rejected PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's demand that the issue of Jerusalem be addressed immediately in peace negotiations and warned that international donors might delay their contributions to the Palestinian National Authority unless the PNA adopted modern accounting measures.

* After returning military equipment seized from a U.N. collection center, Bosnian Serb forces fired mortar shells at Sarajevo. In the Serbian-held town of Bijeljina in northeast Bosnia, up to 300 Muslims were expelled from their homes, with able-bodied men sent to forced labor camps.

Aug. 7: U.S. Secretary of State Christopher presented some "thoughts from [Israeli] Prime Minister Rabin" to Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad at a meeting in Damascus.

Aug. 8: Israeli Prime Minister Rabin met Jordan's King Hussein at the latter's summer palace in Aqaba, marking the first official visit by an Israeli leader to Jordan. The two leaders then opened a new border crossing at Aqaba and Eilat, Israel.

* Its three-month mandate ended, an international observer mission sent to help restore calm after the Feb. 25 Hebron massacre left the West Bank town.

* Following increased Bosnian Serb cease-fire violations around Sarajevo, British U.N. commander Rose proposed demilitarization of the area surrounding the Bosnian capital.

* As Indian troops withdrew from the holiest mosque in Indian-controlled Kashmir, India's Prime Minister Narasimha Rao asked government officials to meet with leaders of Kashmir's pro-independence movement to discuss the possibility of holding elections next year, while his cabinet extended emergency powers over the disputed state for another six months.

* An Argentine court issued an arrest warrant for four Iranian Embassy employees in conjunction with the July 18 car bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

Aug. 10: Meeting at the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and PLO Chairman Arafat agreed on stepped-up talks to extend Palestinian self-rule.

* In a letter to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn, President Clinton said he would ask the U.N. to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia if Bosnian Serbs did not accept the international peace plan by Oct. 15.

Aug. 11: As Bosnian government leaders vowed to continue their military offensive against Bosnian Serb forces north of Sarajevo, gunfire grounded U.N. aid flights to Sarajevo only two days after they had been resumed.

Aug. 14: The notorious Ilyich (Carlos) Ramirez Sanchez, "the Jackal," said to be responsible for 83 deaths and hundreds of injuries in nearly 20 years of terrorist attacks, was arrested by authorities in Sudan and handed over to France, where he had been sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for the 1975 murder of two French security agents.

Aug. 15: A day after Hamas claimed responsibility for shooting attacks which killed one Israeli and wounded six others, Palestinian police in Gaza arrested more than a dozen suspected Hamas members.

* Hours after a U.N.-mediated agreement with the Bosnian government to end shooting around Sarajevo went into effect, Bosnian Serb snipers fired into suburbs around the capital.

Aug. 16: U.N. relief flights to Sarajevo resumed after a five-day suspension.

Aug. 17: Israel warned that it would not extend Palestinian self-rule unless Palestinian officials put a halt to attacks on Israelis.

* Bosnian Serb forces, suffering from Serbia's cessation of support, notified U.N. forces that in order to travel throughout Bosnian Serb-held territory they would have to supply gasoline to soldiers at each armed checkpoint.

Aug. 18: In the northwest Algerian region of Mascara, hundreds of people were killed and injured, and thousands left homeless, by an earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale.

Aug. 19: Israel handed over responsibility, but no funds or tax revenues, for education in the West Bank to Palestinian authorities and released 247 Palestinian prisoners.

Aug. 20: In the Biha’c region of Bosnia, government troops captured the town of Velika Kladusa, headquarters of rebel Bosnian Muslim leader Fikret Abdic, who was driven into exile, and up to 20,000 of whose followers were reported to have fled.

Aug. 23: Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told a rally that "Pakistan possesses the atomic bomb."

Aug. 24: Israel and the PLO signed an agreement transferring responsibility for health and other civil matters to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

* The U.S. granted political asylum to former Saudi diplomat Mohammed Khilewi, who said his life was in danger for threatening to reveal Saudi government documents.

Aug. 26: Near Luxor in southern Egypt, Islamist militants fired at a Spanish tour bus, killing a 13-year-old Spanish boy.

* U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry authorized the payment of $100,000 to family members of each of the 11 non-Americans killed when U.S. Air Force jets mistakenly shot down two U.S. Army helicopters in northern Iraq's "no-fly" zone.

Aug. 27: Pakistan offered to renounce nuclear weapons if neighboring India does the same, an offer it first made 12 years ago.

* In the first fatal attack on Israeli civilians since Palestinian self-rule took effect in May, Hamas claimed responsibility for the stabbing deaths of two Israeli construction workers near Tel Aviv.

Aug. 28: In a weekend referendum, Bosnian Serbs overwhelmingly rejected the international plan for the partition of Bosnia.

* Ignoring State Department warnings, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Wesley Clark, the Joint Chiefs of Staff director of strategy, met with Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic, accused by the U.S. of war crimes.

Sept. 1: Morocco and Israel announced plans to open liaison offices in Rabat and Tel Aviv. Morocco will open another office for liaison with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

* Schools on the West Bank opened for the first time under Palestinian control.

* Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi celebrated the 25th anniversary of the 1969 bloodless coup which brought him to power.

Sept. 2: Russia warned the U.S. that it would never agree to the lifting of the arms embargo against Bosnia, but wanted economic sanctions against Serbia lifted in recognition of Serbia's efforts to persuade its Bosnian allies to agree to the international partitition plan.

Sept. 3: Bosnian Serbs refused to guarantee the safety of Pope John Paul II during his planned visit to Sarajevo.

Sept. 4: Israel agreed to allow 44 members of the Palestine National Council into Gaza for a meeting to vote on repeal of the part of the PLO charter calling for the destruction of Israel.

* At least 17 people were killed and an unknown number wounded in fighting between rival clans in Somalia.

Sept. 5: Following weeks of controversy over the issues of abortion and contraception during which Pope John Paul II sent envoys to Iran and Libya and allied the Roman Catholic Church with conservative Islamists, the U.N.-sponsored International Conference on Population and Development opened in Cairo, attended by 3,500 delegates from 189 nations. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Sudan and Lebanon boycotted the conference. Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller and Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia chose not to attend. A third Muslim woman prime minister, Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto, attended but cited "serious flaws" in the proposed plan of action.

* Five weeks after it was banned by the Palestinian National Authority, the Jerusalem pro-Jordanian newspaper An Nahar was allowed to publish again. Its first editions adopted "nationalist," pro-PLO positions.

* Russia threatened to withdraw its peacekeeping troops if the U.S. lifts the arms embargo on Bosnia.

Sept. 6: In daylong raids throughout the Gaza Strip, Palestinian police rounded up more than 60 members of the militant Islamic Jihad following a weekend attack on an Israeli army patrol which left one soldier dead and two wounded.

* At services observing Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, U.S. rabbis were asked to read a letter from Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in support of the Middle East peace process.

* Citing concerns for the safety of Sarajevans, Pope John Paul II postponed his visit to the Bosnian capital.

Sept. 12: In a live satellite teleconference, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and President Bill Clinton answered questions from American Jews at 70 sites around the country.

Sept. 13: Algerian President Liamine Zeroual announced that imprisoned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) leaders Abassi Madani and Ali Belhadj had been transferred to house arrest and three other FIS officials had been released.

* The U.N. population conference ended in Cairo with adoption by consensus of a broad-ranging plan of action emphasizing the education and advancement of women, and differing very little from the original draft presented to delegates before the conference.

Sept. 15: Yugoslavia (the former republics of Serbia and Montenegro) agreed in principle to international monitoring of its blockade of Bosnian Serbs.

* The last U.S. forces withdrew from Somalia.

Sept. 16: PLO Trade and Economics Minister Ahmed Koreih, head of the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction, resigned from his position because of dissatisfaction with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's rule.

Sept. 17: Four Egyptian policemen and an Egyptian U.N. worker were killed near Luxor in an attack on a U.N. aid team and their police escorts by the militant Islamic Group.

Sept. 18: As eight people were wounded in Sarajevo by the heaviest fighting in six months, Bosnian Serbs forced 1,300 Muslims from their homes in northeastern Bosnia.

* In the first fatal clash between Palestinian police and Hamas activists, Gaza police firing on a car in which another officer was escorting two Hamas members killed their fellow officer and wounded the two activists.

* Egyptian police killed three Islamic militants and arrested 168 suspects in southern Egypt.

* In a Moscow-brokered truce, the government of the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan and opposition rebels agreed on a cease-fire to take effect Nov. 5.

Sept. 19: Syria denied Israeli Housing Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer's statement on Israel radio that the Israeli government was conducting secret talks with Damascus.

Sept. 20: Major Western oil companies signed an estimated $8 billion deal with Azerbaijan to develop oil fields in the former Soviet republic's Baku region.

Sept. 21: As Bosnian Serb forces continued to cut water, gas and electricity supplies to Sarajevo and to maintain 18 heavy artillery weapons in the exclusion zone surrounding the Bosnian capital, U.N. military observers reported several hundred flights by Serbian helicopters over northeastern Bosnia.

Sept. 22: Following a Bosnian Serb attack on French troops northeast of Sarajevo, NATO warplanes bombed an unmanned tank near the Bosnian capital.

Sept. 23: In response to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's promise to support a peace plan for Bosnia, halt shipment of supplies to Bosnian Serbs and permit civilian monitoring of the Serbian-Bosnian border, the U.N. Security Council voted to ease sanctions on Yugoslavia for 100 days and to freeze economic activities and political talks with Bosnian Serbs until they agreed to the international partition plan.

Sept. 24: Retaliating against new U.N. sanctions, Bosnian Serbs forced the Sarajevo airport to close and blocked U.N. peacekeeping operations.

Sept. 25: In what was described as a "positive" meeting at the Gaza Strip's Erez Crossing, PLO Chairman Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Rabin began negotiations on Palestinian elections.

* Israeli spokesman Oded Ben-Ami confirmed that Prime Minister Rabin authorized in August the expansion of Jewish settlements around Jerusalem and the northern West Bank town of Qalqiliya.

* On the eve of the opening of the U.N. General Assembly and of a two-day summit with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, President Clinton met with Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic to discuss alternatives to lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia if the Bosnia Serbs fail to accept the international partition plan by the Oct. 15 deadline.

Sept. 26: Speaking at the opening session of the U.N. General Assembly, President Clinton urged the U.N. to use additional force if necessary to enforce its peacekeeping operation in Bosnia.

* Saudi Arabia confirmed that in the past three weeks it had arrested 110 Muslim militants on charges of working with "foreign interests" to "spread sedition" and destablilize the country.

* The head of Israel's banned Kach movement, Baruch Marzel, was released from prison to house arrest in the Tel Romeida Jewish settlement in Hebron.

Sept. 27: Bosnian President Izetbegovic said he would be willing to wait an additional six months for the lifting of the arms embargo on Bosnia.

* Meeting briefly with President Clinton at the United Nations, Azerbaijani leader Gaidar Aliyev requested a more active U.S. role in settling his country's dispute with Armenia and in persuading Russia to drop its objections to Azerbaijan's recent oil deal with major Western companies.

* Jordan renounced its religious links to the West Bank, dismissing hundreds of employees at 50 religious sites, but maintained its claim to spiritual authority in Jerusalem.

Sept. 30: The six Gulf Cooperation Council states—Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates—told U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher that they would end the "secondary" and "tertiary" aspects of the Arab League boycott against Israel.

* Israel's first ambassador to the Vatican, Shmuel Hadas, presented his credentials to Pope John Paul II.