Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2000, Pages 100-102

Facts For Your Files

A Chronology of U.S.-Middle East Relations

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Sept. 2, 2000: Lebanese opposition leader and former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri swept to victory, winning 92 of 128 seats, in the second and final round of Lebanese parliamentary elections, the country’s first since Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon and the death of Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad. The vote was seen as a rejection of Syrian influence.

Sept. 3: After a three-hour rally, thousands of his supporters accompanied Aryeh Deri, former leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, to Ramle prison where he began serving a three-year term for fraud and bribery.

Sept. 4: The wives of Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore and vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman met privately with some 40 American Muslim leaders attending the Islamic Society of North America convention in Chicago.

• Algerian soldiers killed leading Islamic militant Hamid Mouffok and two others allegedly fleeing after an attack which killed two civilian security officers some 75 miles east of Algiers.

Sept. 5: An Amnesty International report criticized the Palestinian Authority for limiting freedom of expression by arresting those who oppose its policies.

• An Israeli military court sentenced a Palestinian shepherd to life in prison for the June 1997 stabbing to death of two teenage Israeli hikers.

Sept. 6: Attending the U.N. Millennium Summit in New York, President Bill Clinton met separately with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

• Three Palestinians driving in their employer’s car with Israeli license plates alleged Israeli border police stopped them at a permanent roadblock outside Jerusalem late at night and beat them until they bled.

• After heavy fighting, Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militia captured the key northern city of Taloqan, which had been under siege for several weeks.

• World oil prices hit $34.90 a barrel, the highest price in a decade.

Sept. 7: A massive study on Gulf war syndrome found no conclusive evidence, in large part due to a lack of data, that nerve gas, uranium or military vaccinations caused the disease, suffered by some 118,000 veterans.

• For the second time in five days, a bomb exploded in the Pakistani city of Lahore, some 2 miles from the border with India, killing two people in the crowded Dharampura market and injuring at least 33 others.

• Two Indian soldiers and four Pakistani militants were killed in a three-hour gunbattle along the Kashmiri frontier.

• A Bangladeshi judge granted bail to former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, charged with taking $35 million in kickbacks in the state-owned airline’s purchase of two Airbus planes.

Sept. 8: An explosion at the Jamhour power station outside Beirut, demolished by Israeli warplanes in February and May, injured five Egyptian technicians sent to help repair the facility and caused electricity to be cut off for several hours.

• The interior ministers of 11 former Soviet republics agreed to cooperate in fighting militant Islamic groups attacking southern Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

Sept. 9: As President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Barak met in New York, and President Arafat convened a Palestinian Central Council meeting in Gaza to debate a Sept. 13 declaration of a Palestinian state, Palestinian officials said four weeks of “decisive” peace talks would begin in two days.

• In a meadow near the eastern Bosnian town of Sokolac forensic experts unearthed the remains of some 50 Muslims allegedly killed by Serbs in 1992.

Sept. 10: The Palestinian Central Council set a revised deadline of Nov. 15 for the declaration of a Palestinian state, but decreed that concrete “steps of sovereignty” be undertaken immediately.

• Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh blamed radical settlers in Hebron for escalating violence which he said was jeopardizing a Jewish presence in the West Bank Arab city.

• Baghdad criticized a Jordanian court ruling that an Italian pilot violated Jordanian air space by flying to and from Iraq without permission. Nicole Trivani was sentenced to three years in prison for flying European human rights activists to Baghdad in violation of U.N. sanctions.

• Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban urged opposition forces to surrender and put an end to the country’s civil war.

• OPEC ministers meeting in Vienna agreed to produce 800,000 more barrels of oil a day to help alleviate high gasoline and heating oil prices, which responded only sluggishly.

Sept. 11: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the Security Council that Iraq refused to allow independent experts into the country to assess the living conditions there after a decade of sanctions, nor would Baghdad allow entry to another group of experts working on a plan for Iraq to use its oil-for-food revenue to purchase domestic goods.

• A hard-line Iranian provincial court sentenced 24 people to jail terms of one to five years for their role in April demonstrations in Khalkhal protesting the Council of Guardians’ annulment of the election to parliament of reformist Keikavous Khaknejad. The court acquitted 28 defendents, including Khaknejad.

Sept. 12: Announcing the arrests of 38 Israeli and 3 West Bank Arabs on suspicion of arson, unlawful association, incitement to violence, arms trafficking and other charges, Northern Israel police commander Alik Ron suggested that the suspects were engaging in a pattern of planned terror and “nationalist activity.”

• Iran’s judiciary indicted 18 people, including senior intelligence officials, for the 1998 murders of four intellectuals.

• A Turkish court issued an arrest warrant for former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan when the Islamist politician failed to show up to begin a one-year prison sentence.

• An Afghan opposition spokesman said some 5,000 refugees fleeing the fighting in northern Afghanistan were turned back when they tried to cross the Pyandzh River into Tajikistan.

Sept. 13: On the date the Oslo accords called for a final settlement to have been reached, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators announced that a new round of talks would resume the following day in New York, at the invitation of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

• U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat was said to be planning to meet with Austrian representatives in the next two days to urge the establishment of a $150 million interim fund to help speed payments to some 21,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors, who allege they have been excluded from Austria’s $415 million restitution plan for Nazi-era forced laborers.

• Cypriot President Glafcos Clerides boycotted U.N. “proximity talks” in New York the day after Secretary-General Kofi Annan read a statement referring to Cyprus and Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus as “the political equal of the other.”

• Turkish police closed down 18 offices of the pro-Islamist National Youth Foundation.

• In a speech to a joint session of Congress, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee called on the U.S. to understand India’s “security concerns” in testing nuclear weapons two years ago.

Sept. 14: Responding to reports that Iraq had flown a fighter jet into Saudi airspace the previous week, Secretary of State Albright said the U.S. was prepared to use “credible force” against Iraq, and the Clinton administration announced it would be providing $4 million to political opponents of Iraqi President Saddam Hussain. Meanwhile Kuwait, denying it was illegally siphoning oil from Iraqi border fields, accused Baghdad of trying to start a new regional war, and Saddam Hussain ordered year-round military training in response to the increased hostility.

• As Israeli-Palestinian talks resumed in New York, Secretary of State Albright urged both sides to show “flexibility,” while Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdullah said, “There is nothing to negotiate and compromise on when it comes to Jerusalem.”

• Receiving an honorary degree from Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk called for a shared Jerusalem, saying the city “is not, and cannot be the exclusive preserve of one religion.”

• Israel successfully test-fired its Arrow missile, for which the U.S. paid more than half the $2 billion cost.

• Israel said it had filed 486 complaints with the United Nations about Lebanese civilians throwing stones, bottles and other objects at armed Israeli soldiers across the border since Israel’s May withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

• Describing its members as “freedom fighters,” the Kashmiri independence Lashkar-e-Taiba group said it would continue suicide missions against Indian troops in the disputed territory.

• The Clinton administration added to its list of foreign terrorist organizations the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which the U.S. accused of having ties with exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.

Sept. 15: In the highest-level such encounter in two decades, Secretary of State Albright and Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi attended a U.N.-sponsored eight-nation meeting to promote peace in Afghanistan.

• In Kashmir 17 people were killed, including 2 Indian soldiers and 13 separatist militants, in separate shootouts in the disputed state.

• Iraq’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), led by Jalal Talabani, launched a large-scale attack on Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters, thousands of whom had fled Turkey for Iraq following the capture of their leader, Abdullah Ocalan, and who reportedly had made frequent crossings into PUK territory. Two PUK and 15 PKK guerrillas were killed in heavy fighting,

Sept. 16: On the 18th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, demonstrations were held in Washington, DC, London, Jordan and Lebanon in support of the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

Sept. 17: Haifa District Attorney Lili Borishansky said the police files she received on 41 Israeli Arabs and Palestinians arrested Sept. 12 “contain no evidence of nationalist motivation” for torchings of houses and businesses in Umm el-Fahm, which were instead acts of revenge for a 1999 double murder over a property dispute.

• In a challenge to U.N. sanctions against flights to Iraq, a team of Russian oil experts flew from Moscow to Baghdad.

Sept. 18: Prime Minister Barak said that “Israel is not only opposed to transferring sovereignty on the Temple Mount to the Palestinians, but it is also absolutely opposed to transferring sovereignty on the Mount to any Muslim body.”

• Jordan’s State Security Court sentenced to death six Islamists, four of whom remain at large, for plotting to attack Israeli and American targets in Jordan over the New Year. Of the 28 defendants, all linked to exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, two others had their death sentences commuted to life in prison, six were acquitted, and the remainder received 15-year prison sentences.

• Iraq accused Iranian agents of firing three rockets at residential districts in Baghdad, wounding one person and destroying several houses.

Sept. 19: Palestinian representative to the U.N. Nasser al-Kidwa said Palestinians had offered Israel control over the Western Wall and a promise to prevent excavations under Jerusalem’s Haram al-Sharif. Meanwhile, after accusing Palestinian President Arafat of hardening his position on the unsettled issues and calling for an indefinite “timeout” in peace negotiations, Prime Minister Barak’s office announced at 9 p.m. that a meeting would take place the following day.

• At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) said of the U.S. and British air campaign against Iraq, “It appears that the current policy is a failure.”

• Lebanese government troops were deployed to Jezzine for the first time since the June dissolution of the South Lebanon Army (SLA), Israel’s proxy militia in its former occupation zone.

• Returning to New Delhi after his state visit to Washington, Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee said he had felt no U.S. pressure to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

• A powerful bomb exploded in a crowded Islamabad market, killing 16 people and wounding more than 80 others in the deadliest of Pakistan’s 40 bombings this year.

• Afghan opposition forces said they had recaptured in overnight fighting the strategic northern district of Imam Sahib, which had fallen to ruling Taliban forces the previous day.

Sept. 20: Forty-five Iraqi Chaldean Christians, including 19 children, crossed the border from Tijuana, Mexico to San Ysidro, CA and turned themselves in to U.S. immigration officials, requesting political asylum. Some 150 more Iraqis remained in a Tijuana hotel where some had been staying for several months waiting to enter the U.S.

• The U.S. approved visits to American colleges by Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi.

• Fighting between India and Pakistan on the Kashmir border continued for a third straight day.

Sept. 21: An Iranian appeals court reduced the jail terms by between two and six years of 10 Iranian Jews convicted of spying for Israel.

• A day after Lebanese Christian leaders called for the withdrawal of foreign troops, President Emile Lahoud issued a statement saying, “The Syrian presence in Lebanon is legitimate [and] temporary.”

• Baghdad accused Iran of using dozens of Iraqi jetliners sent to Tehran for safekeeping during the 1991 Gulf war.

Sept. 22: The State Department confirmed that the security clearance of U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk had been suspended pending the completion of an investigation into Indyk’s “suspected violations” of security standards, primarily “the sloppy handling of classified information.”

• A French plane carrying doctors, artists and athletes opposed to U.N. sanctions on Iraq landed in Baghdad in what the U.S. called a “blatant violation” of the 10-year-old embargo.

Sept. 23: Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) told a national summit meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that he and presidential candidate Al Gore “both believe that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel…and that the United States Embassy should be relocated to Jerusalem, hopefully soon.” Lieberman also thanked AIPAC for getting involved in American politics.

• An Israeli delegation met with officials of the German state of Bavaria to discuss compensation of the families of Israeli athletes killed during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.

• Turkey released from prison Akin Birdal, former president of the independent Human Rights Association, who had served 10 months for “inciting racial hatred” by calling for an end to the 16-year war against Kurdish rebels.

• A Russian aircraft flew to Baghdad without U.N. clearance, carrying medical supplies and 143 passengers, most of them businessmen.

Sept. 24: In Yugoslav presidential elections, opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica claimed to have outpolled President Slobodan Milosevic by 55 to 35 percent.

• Iran’s reformist-dominated parliament ousted hard-liner Hasan Moradi, who won his seat after the Council of Guardians cancelled the election of pro-reform candidate Rahman Kangosha in Arak.

• Egypt charged Egyptian-American Professor Saad Eddine Ibrahim and 27 others with crimes including illegally accepting foreign funds, conspiracy to bribe, and making false statements about Egypt’s internal situation. Ibrahim, who recently had been detained for 45 days after making a video on the country’s upcoming elections, was not re-arrested but could face life in prison if convicted.

Sept. 25: As Israeli and Palestinian negotiators flew to the U.S. for three days of intensive talks, Israeli Prime Minister Barak and Palestinian President Arafat met for the first time since the failure of the Camp David negotiations.

• U.N.-sponsored “proximity talks” on Cyprus ended with both sides rejecting U.N. proposals for ending the negotiating deadlock. A fifth round of talks was scheduled for November, with a final round to begin in January.

• As President Saddam Hussain warned Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to stop providing logistical support to the U.S. and Britain, Iraq said its anti-aircraft defense hit a Western plane in a group patrol over the northern “no-fly” zone. A Pentagon spokesman denied that any plane had been hit.

• India praised the recent French and Russian flights to Iraq in defiance of U.N. sanctions and said it was considering its own protest flight to Baghdad.

• Turkish State Minister Rustu Kazim said human rights abuses jeopardizing Turkey’s admission to the EU would be virtually eradicated by the end of 2001.

Sept. 26: Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State Albright expressed frustration with the growing number of U.S. allies who have sponsored flights to Iraq without U.N. approval. “We are concerned that people can’t seem to get the facts straight on Iraq,” Albright said.

• Syria called for the lifting of U.N. sanctions on Iraq.

• Yugoslav election officials failed to release presidential election results.

• Iraq and Kuwait appeared before the 15-member Governing Council of the U.N. Compensation Commission in Geneva to present their arguments over Kuwait’s suit for $21.5 billion in compensation for lost oil production and sales during Iraq’s August 1990 invasion and ensuing seven-month occupation of the emirate.

Sept. 27: In the first Arab flight to Iraq in 10 years, a Jordanian plane carrying government officials, doctors and medicine flew to Baghdad. Meanwhile, the U.S. agreed to reduce the amount of money being set aside to compensate victims of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, freeing up funds for relief projects in Iraq, and the U.N. Security Council approved a $15.9 billion compensation claim to the Kuwaiti Petroleum Corporation.

• A petition signed by 99 Syrian intellectuals and published in Beirut newspapers called for greater democracy and freedom of expression in Syria.

• Palestinian President Arafat lit the first flare stack at a test well over a major natural gas deposit discovered some 19 miles off the coast of the Gaza Strip.

• Israel’s attorney general found insufficient evidence to prosecute former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on corruption charges.

• One Israeli soldier was killed and one wounded when a pair of roadside bombs exploded near a convoy of Jewish settlers being escorted to the illegal Gaza Strip settlement of Netzarim.

Sept. 28: Likud Party leader Gen. Ariel Sharon, accompanied by party members and 1,000 Israeli riot police, toured Jerusalem’s Haram al-Sharif to assert Jewish claims to the site. Fighting broke out following the visit as some 200 Palestinians, many of them teenagers, threw stones at the helmeted Israeli police, who opened fire with rubber-coated steel bullets, wounding four protesters.

• Israeli Prime Minister Barak told The Jerusalem Post that a peace agreement would include “Jerusalem and al-Quds, one next to the other, as two capitals.” In the U.S., the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations ended with no breakthrough.

• Opponents to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic threatened to call a general strike until Milosevic acknowledged his election defeat and relinquished power.

• OPEC concluded its first summit conference since 1975, in Caracas, Venezuela, by adopting a 20-point manifesto calling on wealthy oil-consuming countries to cut gasoline taxes and forgive Third World debt. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait blocked an Iraqi proposal for OPEC to endorse lifting of the U.N. trade embargo on Iraq, and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah said the Kingdom was “ready and willing” to increase production to help lower oil prices to between $22 and $28 per barrel.

• Morocco and the Polisario Front independence movement in the Western Sahara opened direct peace talks in Berlin over the disputed territory and plans for a long-delayed U.N. referendum.

• In the first official ministerial visit in 21 years, Egyptian Public Sector Minister Mokhtar Khattab arrived in Tehran to attend an international trade fair.

Sept. 29: As protests broke out following Friday prayers at Jerusalem’s Haram al-Sharif, Israeli police posted at gates and nearby walls of the compound fired at the demonstrators, killing three Palestinians and wounding at least 96, in the bloodiest clash in four years at Islam’s third holiest site.

• A Turkish court acquitted journalist Nadire Mater of insulting the military in her banned book, Mehmet’s War, which depicts the horrors and frustrations of Turkish soldiers fighting Kurdish rebels.

• In a U.N.-approved flight, a Yemeni aircraft carrying government officials and humanitarian aid flew over Saudi airspace to Baghdad’s Saddam International Airport.

Sept. 30: Israeli troops killed at least 12 Palestinians and wounded more than 500 in pitched battles throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Among those killed in Gaza was Mohammed al-Durra, 12, as his father tried to protect him from Israeli gunfire. The father was subsequently wounded, an ambulance driver who tried to rescue them was shot and killed, and a second ambulance driver was shot and wounded, while six Israeli soldiers were injured. Arabs living in Israel announced a general protest strike.

• As the Arab League scheduled an emergency session for the following day, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon burned in effigy Gen. Ariel Sharon, who led Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and observed a general strike to protest Sharon’s visit to the Haram al-Sharif, while some 5,000 Egyptian students rallied in Alexandria to condemn the right-wing Israeli’s provocation.