December/January 1992/93, Page 49

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

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Oct. 1: The Qatar News Agency reported that Saudi troops had seized a Qatari border post and expelled its occupants, one day after an armed clash at the border post.

Over 1,500 Bosnians released from the Serbrun Trnopolje detention camp arrived in Croatia, in the first internationally-supervised prisoner release in the nearly six months of fighting for control of the Bosnian republic after it seceded from Yugoslavia.

Oct. 2: The U.N. Security Council voted to seize approximately $800 million in Iraqi assets frozen abroad to compensate victims of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and to pay U.N. expenses in Iraq.

Oct. 3: In the first relief flight into Bosnia since an Italian aid plane was shot down last month, a U.N. plane carrying 10 tons of food landed in Sarajevo.

Oct. 5: Kuwait held its first election in six years, as the country's 81,400 eligible male voters elected a 50-seat National Assembly dominated by opposition critics of the government.

Oct. 7: In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israeli troops wounded more than 90 Palestinians demonstrating in support of political prisoners on the 12th day of their hunger strike.

Serbian militias took control of Bosanski Brod, the last major town in northern Bosnia held by the Bosnian government.

Iraq requested that a scheduled U.N. inspection be delayed until after the Nov. 3 U.S. election, "to avoid the possibility of the U.S. administration exploiting the proposed visit for their own ends."

Oct. 8: Following a visit to Israel by Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres announced that Israel would no longer object to participation in regional negotiations by Palestinians from outside the occupied territories, provided they were not members of the Palestine National Congress or residents of East Jerusalem.

Oct. 9: The U.N. Security Council voted to ban all military flights over Bosnia, but did not authorize enforcement of the ban.

Oct. 10: One Palestinian was killed and another 49 wounded in a second day of clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian demonstrators supporting hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and detention camps.

Iraq released American munitions disposal expert Clinton Hall the day after seizing him at gunpoint in the demilitarized zone between Kuwait and Iraq.

Oct. 11: Palestinian political prisoners suspended their two-week-long hunger strike after Israeli officials agreed to investigate their demands for improved prison conditions.

Oct. 12: In Cairo, an earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale killed over 500 people and wounded thousands more.

Kuwait agreed to buy $4 billion in advanced battle tanks from the U.S. rather than from Britain after extensive lobbying by the White House and Pentagon.

Oct. 13: Serbian forces in Bosnia agreed to send their military aircraft to airfields under U.N. supervision.

Oct. 15: The U.N. Security Council warned Saddam Hussain to cooperate fully with U.N. arms inspectors, after the Iraqi president accused the U.N. teams of trying to "strip Iraq of industrial capability."

Oct. 19: An Arab-Israeli delegation led by MK Abdul Waheb Darawshe met with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in Tunis in an effort to step up the Mideast peace process. Israel's Likud bloc announced it would try to remove Darawshe's parliamentary immunity and have him charged under Israel's anti-terrorism law.

U.S. officials critical of a new Iraqi-U.N. agreement said it gives Baghdad too much control over U.N. relief operations.

Oct. 20: The newly elected Lebanese parliament chose Shi'i militia leader and Syrian ally Nabih Berri as speaker for the coming four years.

Oct. 21: The seventh round of Mideast peace talks opened in Washington, with little progress expected until after the Nov. 3 U.S. elections.

In the second attack on foreign tourists in less than a month, one British woman tourist was killed and two male tourists injured in southern Egypt's Qena Province by gunmen believed to be members of the militant Islamic Group.

The U.S. dropped its opposition to a U.N. agreement with Baghdad on the distribution of humanitarian aid in Iraq.

Oct. 22: Lebanese President Elias Hrawi named Sunni Muslim billionaire Rafik Al-Hariri as the country's new prime minister.

Oct. 23: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres met in Rome with Pope John Paul II, who accepted Peres' invitation to visit Israel and to exchange "personal representatives" with the Jewish state.

Oct. 25: Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin denied that he advocated a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. In southern Lebanon, five Israeli soldiers were killed and another five wounded in an attack by Hezbollah forces.

An estimated 200 Iraqi opposition leaders began a three-day meeting in Kurdish northern Iraq.

Oct. 26: Israeli forces bombed and shelled Lebanese villages north of Israel's self-declared "security zone" in retaliation for Hezbollah attacks on Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.

Iraqi Kurdish forces cooperating with Turkish troops captured the main base of Turkish Kurd separatists after three weeks of fighting along the Turkish-Iraq border.

Oct. 28: An Israeli parliamentary committee decided not to punish four MKs who recently met with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

A U.N. Human Rights Commission report warned that Bosnian Muslims are "virtually threatened with extinction" unless sufficient relief is provided before the onset of winter.

Oct. 29: The seventh round of Mideast peace talks recessed until after the U. S. elections, with Israel and Jordan reported to have reached tentative agreement on an agenda for further negotiations.

U.N. envoy for Somalia Mohamed Sahnoun resigned after publicly criticizing the U.N. and receiving a reprimand from Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Oct. 30: A federal grand jury released notes written by then-Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger after a Jan. 7, 1986 White House meeting indicating that then-Vice President Bush supported the arms-for-hostages deal with Iran. White House aides said the note indicated nothing new and called the timing of the release, four days before the presidential election, political.

U.N. Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali named Kurdish Iraqi diplomat Esmat Kittani the new U.N. envoy to Somalia.

Oct. 31: Iraqi opposition groups meeting in northern Iraq elected Kurdish guerrilla leader Massoud Barzani, moderate Shi'i clergyman Muhammad Bahr Ulum and retired Maj. Gen. Hasan Naqib to lead their struggle against Saddam Hussain.