Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 2000, pages 104-105

Facts For Your Files

A Chronology of U.S.-Middle East Relations

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Jan. 1, 2000: The day after Russian President Boris Yeltsin resigned, naming Vladimir Putin as acting president, the new leader fired two of Russia’s three commanders in Chechnya, army Generals Vladimir Shamanov and Gennady Troshev.

• The body of a kidnapped Lebanese soldier was found the day after an army patrol was ambushed by the radical Gamaa al Islamiya in the northern town of Sir ad Dinniyah.

• The five hijackers of an Indian Airlines jet, along with three Islamist prisoners freed by India, fled Afghanistan hours after the deal ending an eight-day hijacking had been reached.

Jan. 3: President Bill Clinton met separately with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Charaa as U.S.-sponsored peace talks opened in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

• At least 17 people, including 11 militants, 2 women hostages and 4 Lebanese soldiers, were killed during an army assault on the village of Kfar Hibbou, where militants had taken refuge following clashes in nearby Sir ad Dinniyah.

• In southern Egypt, at least 20 people were reported killed in three days of clashes between Muslims and Christian Copts in El Kusheh and two neighboring villages.

• Saying the Algerian government had not lived up to its agreement to pardon insurgents who turn themselves in, the Islamic Salvation Front’s military wing said it was “temporarily freezing” the cease-fire agreement.

• In a midday attack, suspected Chechen sympathizers fired four rocket-propelled grenades at the Russian Embassy in Beirut.

Jan. 4: President Clinton made a second visit to Israeli-Syrian peace talks in Shepherdstown, where he met jointly with Israeli Prime Minister Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Charaa, who had reached an impasse over the order of agenda items.

• Israel and the Palestinian Authority signed maps for the transfer of 5 percent of West Bank land, primarily an unpopulated swath of the Judean Desert, and agreed that Israel would transfer an additional 6.1 percent of the West Bank to Palestinian control by Jan. 20.

• Israeli President Ezer Weizman faced mounting pressure to resign following allegations that he had accepted some $450,000 in cash gifts from French businessman Edouard Saroussi.

• Iraq reported firing for a second straight day on U.S. and British warplanes patroling the southern “no-fly” zone, although there had been no American bombings of Iraq since Ramadan began on Dec. 9.

Jan. 5: Seven weeks behind schedule, Israeli troops began withdrawing from 5 percent of the West Bank.

• Speaking in a Karachi mosque, Maulana Masood Azhar, freed by India in exchange for the release of hijacked Indian Airlines passengers, called for the destruction of America and India and vowed to liberate Kashmir.

• Chechen rebels in the capital of Grozny launched fierce counterattacks against surrounding Russian troops.

Jan. 6: President Clinton traveled for a third time to Shepherdstown, where negotiations were stalled over Syrian insistence that Israel agree to formally discuss borders in face-to-face talks.

• National Security Adviser Samuel (Sandy) Berger said U.S. assistance in breaking up terrorist cells in eight countries “almost certainly prevented” terrorist attacks in the closing weeks of 1999.

• The Palestinian Authority freed Dr. Abdel Sattar Qassem and Ahmad Shaker Dodeen, the last of 11 jailed signers of a statement criticizing the government of President Arafat.

• Accusing Pakistan of masterminding the operation, India arrested four Kashmiri separatists in connection with the hijacking of an Indian Airlines jet.

Jan. 7: In Shepherdstown, President Clinton presented a U.S. “working document” to Israeli Prime Minister Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Charaa, who met for their first direct talks in two days.

• In the face of its stalled offensive on Grozny, Russia replaced two of its three senior field generals and indefinitely suspended airstrikes on the Chechen capital.

Jan. 8: Yugoslav Information Minister Goran Matic accused opposition leader Vuk Draskovic of conspiring with the French intelligence service to overthrow President Slobodan Milosevic.

Jan. 9: As both sides presenting annotated versions of the U.S. working document, President Clinton hosted a dinner for Israeli Prime Minister Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Charaa.

• Israel rejected a Palestinian demand that 3.7 million Palestinian refugees from 1948 and 1967 be allowed to return home and compensated for their suffering and lost property.

• U.S. and British warplanes injured three civilians in attacks on Iraq’s southern “no-fly” zone.

Jan. 10: As Israeli-Syrian peace talks recessed until Jan. 19, more than 100,000 Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv against the return of the Golan Heights to Syria.

• Chechen rebels killed 26 Russian soldiers in surprise attacks on at least three towns, including Gudermes, Chechnya’s second largest city.

• Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov was overwhelmingly re-elected to a five-year term.

Jan. 11: Russian Gen. Viktor Kazantsev announced his forces in Chechnya would detain all Chechen males between the ages of 10 and 60 to determine if any had links with rebel forces.

• Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika issued a blanket pardon to members of the Islamic Salvation Army.

• Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, the first top government official to visit Britain since the 1979 Islamic revolution, signed a joint declaration in which the two countries pledged to strengthen ties.

• Responding to artillery fire from sites near Mosul and Bashiqah, U.S. warplanes bombed an air defense system in Iraq’s northern “no-fly” zone.

Jan. 12: Iraq rejected the proposed reappointment of Rolf Ekeus as chairman of a new U.N. arms inspection agency, but said it would allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to visit the country and check its uranium stockpiles.

• Turkish leaders suspended for at least a year the execution of Turkish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Jan. 13: The Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz published the draft U.S. peace treaty presented to Israeli and Syrian negotiators in Shepherdstown.

• Israel and its proxy South Lebanese Army released 27 Lebanese prisoners in an apparent deal for information on missing Israeli airman Ron Arad, whose plane crashed over Lebanon in 1986.

• U.S. warplanes bombed an Iraqi air defense system in the northern “no-fly” zone.

Jan. 14: Israeli troops carried out a series of “preventive” arrests of alleged Islamic Jihad members in Jenin, Hebron and Ramallah.

• Israeli Prime Minister Barak said in a newspaper interview that Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad will have to meet him face-to-face to conclude any peace agreement.

• The international war crimes tribunal in The Hague sentenced five Bosnian Croat militiamen to up to 25 years in prison for killing more than 100 Muslim men, women and children in a 1993 rampage in the central Bosnian village of Ahmici.

Jan. 15: Israel postponed for at least two weeks its next scheduled withdrawal from 6.1 percent of the West Bank.

• Notorious Serbian paramilitary leader Zeljko Raznatovic, known as “Arkan,” was assassinated by two gunmen in the lobby of Belgrade’s Intercontinental Hotel.

• As its troops attacked the Chechen capital with artillery and mortar fire, Russian warplanes bombed an oil depot at Grozny’s main refinery.

• Iran’s conservative Council of Guardians barred more than 400 moderate nominees, including jailed dissident cleric Abdullah Nouri, from running as candidates in Feb. 18 parliamentary elections.

Jan. 16: Three days after Algerian President Bouteflika’s amnesty deadline expired, with more than 1,000 Islamist rebels having surrendered to the government but no peace agreement having been reached, government forces prepared a major assault on rebel strongholds.

• Staff Sgt. Frank J. Ronghi, an American peacekeeping soldier in Kosovo, was charged with raping and murdering an 11-year-old ethnic Albanian girl.

Jan. 17: Two days before their scheduled resumption, Israeli-Syrian peace talks were postponed “indefinitely” over Israel’s refusal to explicitly commit to a withdrawal from the Golan Heights to the 1967 border.

Jan. 18: President Clinton spoke by telephone with Syrian President Assad for nearly an hour in an attempt to persuade Syria to resume peace talks with Israel.

• France joined Russia in rejecting as chief U.N. weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus, nominated the previous day by Secretary-General Kofi Annan after months of delay.

Jan. 19: As Palestinian President Arafat met at the White House with President Clinton, who urged Arafat to further compromise his negotiating position, more than 300 rabbis from the Jewish Peace Lobby called for a shared Jerusalem.

• Palestinian Lafi Rajabi, 20, died of torture while in Israeli custody, despite the Supreme Court’s ban on Israeli torture of Palestinian detainees.

• Iranian President Mohammed Khatami called for an end to the presence of Western forces in the Persian Gulf.

• Three months after his government was overthrown, former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was formally charged, along with six others, with attempted murder, kidnapping, terrorism, abetment and hijacking. All seven pleaded not guilty.

Jan. 20: U.S. authorities said they were receiving the cooperation of Abdel Ghani Meskini, the Algerian arrested in Brooklyn Christmas Day for having ties to fellow Algerian Ahmed Ressam, arrested Dec. 14 while crossing to the U.S. from Canada in a car carrying 200 pounds of explosives.

• U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth met in Pakistan with Taliban Information Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and ambassador to Pakistan Saeed Mohammed Haqqani, in an apparent effort to press for the extradition of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.

• Following seven months of quiet diplomacy, Foreign Ministers George Papandreou of Greece and Ismail Cem of Turkey signed five agreements in Ankara pledging to work together to fight terrorism, attract tourists, and bid for the right to co-host the 2008 European soccer championship.

• Israeli Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein ordered a criminal investigation into possible tax evasion by President Ezer Weizman.

• Chechen rebels said they had captured Maj. Gen. Mikhail Malofeyev, deputy commander of the Russian offensive against Chechnya.

Jan. 21: The first 44 members of the NATO-established Kosovo Protection Corps, many former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, were inducted in a ceremony in Pristina.

• A team of five IAEA inspectors arrived in Baghdad for a routine inspection of Iraq’s nuclear power and research plants.

Jan. 22: Acting President Putin fired a third top Russian commander in Chechnya, Col. Gen. Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov.

• Pakistan and India accused each other of sending troops across the line of control in disputed Kashmir in a raid in which seven soldiers died.

Jan. 23: As Prime Minister Barak told his cabinet he would not make any written promise to withdraw from the entire Golan Heights, senior Israeli negotiator Oded Eran said it would be “difficult to reach” the Feb. 13 deadline for an Israeli-Palestinian framework agreement.

• Israeli President Weizman refused to resign over corruption charges, vowing to “fight to the end.”

• With the discovery of six bodies near the southeastern Turkish hideout of the Kurdish militant Hizbullah group, the number of recently uncovered corpses of tortured and buried-alive Kurds believed murdered by the militants rose to 31.

Jan. 24: Having declared a state of emergency and dissolved Sudan’s parliament in December, President Omar el-Bashir dismissed his entire government, appointing a new cabinet.

Jan. 25: As Israeli Prime Minister Barak praised Syrian President Assad as “a strong leader, who is serious and trustworthy and honors his word,” Hezbollah rocket attacks killed an Israeli soldier in occupied southern Lebanon, the first such fatality in five months and since Israeli-Syrian talks began.

• Despite some 250 air sorties on Grozny, Russian troops remained stalled on the outskirts of the Chechen capital and casualties were reported to have risen to 926, with more than 500 in December alone.

• U.S. officials said the December hijacking of an Indian Airlines jet was most likely carried out by the Harakat ul-Mujaheddin, a radical Islamist group with ties to Pakistan’s intelligence service.

• Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, pardoned Tehran’s moderate former mayor, Gholamhossein Karbaschi, who had served seven months of a two-year prison sentence on corruption charges.

Jan. 26: The U.N. Security Council approved Swedish disarmament expert Hans Blix as the new chief arms inspector for Iraq.

Jan. 27: Israeli State Comptroller Eliezer Goldberg implicated Prime Minister Barak’s One Israel Party and close Barak associates in a massive illegal campaign financing scheme.

Jan. 28: At the request of U.S. authorities, Mohambedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian with suspected links to Osama bin Laden, was detained by the Mauritanian security service after having been first arrested, then released, in neighboring Senegal.

• Following a meeting in Davos, Switzerland between President Clinton and Palestinian President Arafat, a senior U.S. official said Israeli and Palestinian negotiators would hold 10 days of talks designed to establish the framework for a peace agreement.

Jan. 29: Islamabad rejected a U.S. warning that Pakistan could be branded a state sponsor of terrorism if it gave direct support to the radical Harkat ul-Mujaheddin.

Jan. 30: Israeli Prime Minister Barak met for three hours in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

• A bomb planted by Hezbollah guerrillas killed Col. Akl Hashem, the South Lebanon Army’s second-in-command. In retaliation, Israel began nighttime bombing of guerrilla-controlled areas of southern Lebanon.

• Fellow rebels opposed to his peace talks with Algerian authorities killed Hassan Hattab, chief of the Appeal and Struggle faction of the Armed Islamic Group.

Jan. 31: Following the killing of three Israeli soldiers in occupied southern Lebanon, Israeli Prime Minister Barak called off stalled peace talks with Syria.

• Secretary of State Madeleine Albright criticized Moscow for inflicting “misery” on civilians in Chechnya.

• U.N.-sponsored talks on the reunification of Cyprus opened in Geneva.