Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May - June 2001, page 101

Facts For Your Files

 

A Chronology of U.S.-Middle East Relations

 

Compiled by Janet McMahon

Feb. 1, 2001: In a report submitted to the U.S. fact-finding committee headed by former Sen. George Mitchell, the Israeli Foreign Ministry found that Gen. Ariel Sharon’s Sept. 28 visit to Jerusalem’s Haram al-Sharif did not provoke the renewed Palestinian intifada.

• Libyan Col. Muammar Qaddafi welcomed home Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, acquitted of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Fhimah’s co-defendant, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, was convicted by a three-judge Scottish tribunal in the Netherlands.

• The U.S. and Yemen agreed that any suspects in the bombing of the USS Cole caught outside Yemen would be tried in the U.S. Aden earlier had turned down a U.S. request that suspects already in Yemeni custody be tried in the U.S.

Feb. 2: The Treasury Department released $4 million in U.S. assistance to the opposition Iraqi National Congress.

• An attorney for the families of Americans killed in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 said the 150 families planned to sue Libya for $10 billion in damages.

Feb. 4: Chairing his last cabinet meeting before Israel’s Feb. 6 election, Prime Minister Ehud Barak—20 points behind Likud candidate Gen. Ariel Sharon in opinion polls—for the first time expressed “sorrow” for the deaths of 13 Arab citizens of Israel killed by Jewish militants and Israeli soldiers in October clashes.

Feb. 5: In his first public statement on the Lockerbie verdict, Libya’s Colonel Qaddafi said his country was “innocent” and called the verdict an “injustice.”

• On the opening day of the trial of four men charged with the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, the attorney for Tanzanian defendant Khalfan Khamis Mohamed told a jury at the Federal District Court in Manhattan that his client was involved in assembling and delivering the bomb but was acting under the orders of “higher ups” and was not aware of their identities or of the target.

Feb. 6: With 62 percent of the vote, Israelis elected Ariel Sharon as their next prime minister. Voter turnout was the lowest ever, with 62 percent of Jewish Israelis and only 13 percent of Arab citizens voting.

Feb. 7: Prime Minister-elect Sharon visited the Western Wall, where he announced that Jerusalem was “the united and indivisible capital of Israel—with the Temple Mount at its center—for all eternity.”

• Secret prosecution witness Jamal Ahmed Al-Fadl testified that prior to the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa he told U.S. authorities that Osama bin Laden had threatened attacks on U.S. targets.

Feb. 8: Saying, “This government will only be held by signed accords,” Sharon adviser and former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Zalmal Shoval rejected Palestinian demands that peace talks be resumed where they ended during January negotiations with the Barak government in Taba, Egypt.

Feb. 9: Israeli Prime Minister-elect Sharon offered Ehud Barak the position of defense minister and former Prime Minister Shimon Peres that of foreign minister in a unity coalition government.

Feb. 10: On the anniversary of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, President Mohammad Khatami accused his hard-line opponents of harming Iran’s image abroad and trying to block hopes for freedom and democracy.

• Armed assailants attacked a shantytown some 60 miles south of Algiers, killing at least 27 people, 13 of them children.

Feb. 11: As gun battles waged in the West Bank, wounding six Palestinians, and a Jewish settler driving near Beit Jala was shot in the head and killed, outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Barak and his successor, Ariel Sharon, met for a second time to discuss a unity government.

• Following a two-day conference of Arab foreign ministers, Egyptian Amr Moussa said the officials had agreed on a “strategy to follow up on the peace process.”

• A lawyer for two suspects in the bombing of the USS Cole said Yemeni authorities had prevented him from seeing his clients since his hiring a month earlier.

• Baghdad said U.S. and British warplanes hit civilian buildings and military targets in southern Iraq, injuring seven civilians and destroying 17 houses.

Feb. 12: Israel’s Labor and Likud parties agreed to form a coalition government after negotiating broad guidelines for the “natural growth” of illegal Jewish settlements but no construction of new ones.

• As intense fighting continued in the West Bank and Gaza, the armed wing of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement threatened to bring about “the downfall of Sharon and his settlements.”

• Saddam Hussain said the U.S. had failed in its confrontation with Baghdad because Washington “could not find an ally among the people of Iraq.”

Feb. 13: In Gaza, missile-firing Israeli helicopters assassinated Massoud Ayyad, a member of Fatah’s elite Force 17 unit.

• National Security Agency director Gen. Mike Hayden said Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden was able to arrange the near-simultaneous bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa because he had “better [communications] technology” than the U.S.

Feb. 14: Israel reimposed a total closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip after Palestinian bus driver Khalil Abu Olbeh crashed his bus into a crowd of Israeli soldiers and civilians at a bus stop in Azur, south of Tel Aviv, killing seven soldiers and a female civilian and injuring 20 people.

• While urging President Arafat to try and curb violent acts, Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed his opposition to Israel’s “targeted killings” of Palestinians.

Feb. 15: Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak agreed to join the Sharon cabinet as defense minister.

Feb. 16: Two dozen U.S. and British warplanes attacked five Iraqi air defense sites near Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding more than 20, in what President Bush described as a “routine” measure to ensure the safety of pilots enforcing the southern “no-fly” zone.

• Following a Hezbollah ambush of an Israeli army convoy in the still-occupied Shebaa Farms region of southern Lebanon, in which one Israeli soldier was killed and one wounded, Israeli artillery, tanks and helicopter gunships bombarded the region for more than an hour.

Feb. 17: As Iraq vowed to retaliate for the U.S. and British airstrikes, U.S. allies including France and Turkey, along with Russia, China and the Arab League, criticized the attacks.

• Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militia said it had recaptured the key central city of Bamiyan.

Feb. 18: Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh said two more suspects had been arrested in the bombing of the USS Cole, but that no evidence linked exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden to the attack.

• As an Egyptian trade delegation landed in Baghdad, Iraq said it had fired on U.S. and British warplanes patroling the “no-fly” zones.

• Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef confirmed that three Americans were being questioned about bombings in Riyadh and Khobar which killed one Briton and injured five people.

Feb. 19: Israeli soldiers assassinated leading Hamas activist Mahmoud Madani as he was walking from a mosque in the Balata refugee camp to a nearby grocery store.

• On the first day of public hearings into the killings of 13 Arab Israeli citizens in October clashes, an Israeli policeman testified that he had been ordered to fire without warning on Arab demonstrators from a distance of 15 yards.

• As the U.S. and Israel began a joint Patriot missile exercise that recalled the 1991 Gulf war, thousands of Iraqis marched for a second day to protest the latest U.S. and British airstrikes. Baghdad vowed revenge against Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for abetting the attacks.

• A Human Rights Watch report concluded that the Taliban militia had massacred on Jan. 8 some 300 unarmed Hazaras, a Shi’i minority in Afghanistan, killing men and boys between the ages of 13 and 70.

Feb. 20: Saudi Arabia and Syria issued a joint communique condemning the U.S. and British airstrikes on Baghdad.

• After five days of heated criticism, former Israeli Prime Minister Barak said he would not serve as defense minister in a coalition government.

• The U.N. warned that at least one million Afghan refugees were at risk of famine in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

• Yemeni municipal elections and a constitutional referendum were marred by gunfire and an explosion which left one person dead.

Feb. 21: The Bush administration urged the Israeli government to turn over some $54 million in tax monies collected on behalf of and due the Palestinian Authority.

• The Pentagon disclosed that the majority of the 25 bombs dropped on Baghdad by U.S. warplanes fell an average of more than 100 feet from their “aimpoints.”

Feb. 22: In his first White House news conference, President Bush said the recent attacks on Baghdad were a signal to Iraqi President Saddam Hussain that the U.S. “will remain engaged” in the Middle East.

Feb. 23: Following a series of killings of Shi’i Muslims, Pakistani police arrested Azim Tariq, leader of the militant Sunni group Sipah-e-Sahaba.

• Post-election violence in Yemen claimed another five lives, bringing the toll to 23.

Feb. 24: On his first official trip abroad, Secretary of State Colin Powell flew to Cairo, where he met with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and said he was open to advice on how to force Iraq to abandon its weapons programs.

Feb. 25: In Jerusalem, Secretary of State Powell met with Israeli Prime Minister-elect Sharon, following a meeting the previous evening with outgoing Prime Minister Barak and before traveling to Ramallah to meet with Palestinian President Arafat. Saying that “the relationship between the U.S. and Israel is unbreakable,” Powell urged Israel to lift its siege of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and for both sides to end the current violence. He then flew to Kuwait, where he took part in 10th anniversary Gulf war celebrations.

Feb. 26: A State Department spokesman said the U.S. favored eliminating many of the economic sanctions against Iraq while tightening military sanctions.

• The State Department’s annual human rights report criticized Israel for using “excessive force” against Palestinian demonstrators.

• Following the shooting ambushes of two settlers, leaders of Jewish settlers’ groups called on the Israeli government to assassinate Yasser Arafat.

• After a raucous four-hour debate, Israel’s Labor Party agreed to join the Sharon coalition government on condition it name its own ministers to the alloted positions.

Feb. 27: As Israel rejected the State Departments findings on its human rights abuses, saying it had “reacted in a proportionate, measured and responsible fashion,” a Palestinian man was killed when an Israeli tank fired on his home, a 13-year-old boy was shot in the head in Gaza, and three Israeli workers were wounded in an ambush in Gaza.

Feb. 28: With the death toll in five months of fighting at 339 Palestinians, a German doctor married to a Palestinian, 14 Israeli Arabs and 57 Israeli Jews, Israel’s military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, said the retaking of Palestinian-controlled areas in the West Bank and Gaza was “a possible direction.”

• Fighting broke out between ethnic Albanian rebels and government forces in southern Serbia and northern Macedonia, both bordering Kosovo.

March 1: A taxi van exploded in northern Israel after a Palestinian passenger allegedly detonated a bomb he was carrying, killing one Israeli and wounding nine others, including the Palestinian.

• Calling for increased economic cooperation with Baghdad, Syria’s parliament approved a free-trade zone with Iraq.

• Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban militia announced it had begun destroying all the country’s statues, including two massive 5th century Buddhas carved into a sandstone cliff in the central Bamiyan Province.

March 2: Israel’s Labor Party elected former Gen. Binyamin Ben-Eliezer defense minister in the coalition government being formed by Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon. Israeli security forces killed Youssef el-Habila, a 45-year-old homeless man, in Gaza and a nine-year-old boy in the West Bank town of el-Bireh.

• At a special summit of the Organization of African Unity held in Sirte, Libya, some 45 heads of state proclaimed the establishment of the African Union, initiated by Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi.

March 3: Hours after army chief of staff Shaul Mofaz said Israel would “raise the threshold” in its “action and pressure” against Palestinians, Hamas threatened to launch a campaign of suicide bombings once Ariel Sharon took office.

March 4: Completing arrangements for a coalition government, Israeli Prime Minister-elect Sharon reached agreement with the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party,

• A Palestinian suicide bomber killed himself and three Israelis, and injured dozens more, in the coastal city of Netanya.

• A Tehran court convicted Deputy Interior Minister Mostafa Tajzadeh, in charge of February 2000 elections in which hard-liners lost control of parliament, on charges of vote-rigging.

March 5: Ramin Nematizadeh, one of 10 Iranian Jews convicted of spying for Israel, was released after two years in prison.

• Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar praised the destruction of Buddhist and other statues in Afghanistan, saying, “It has given praise to God that we have destroyed them.”

• Near Mecca, 35 hajj pilgrims were killed in a stampede on the final day of the pilgrimage, in which some two million Muslims participated.

• Ethnic Albanians clashed with Macedonian troops for a second day near the Kosovo border.

• The presidents of Yugoslavia and the Bosnian Serb Republic signed an agreement establishing closer ties and pledging special cooperation in the economy, tourism, education and anti-crime efforts.

March 6: U.N. representatives charged that Iraqi officials were demanding kickbacks and illegal commissions on contracts for food, medicine and humanitarian aid purchased under the “oil-for-food” program.

March 7: As Ariel Sharon was sworn in as Israel’s 11th prime minister, the Knesset repealed the 1996 election law mandating a separate vote for prime minister.

• IDF troops dug a deep trench across the Birzeit-Ramallah road, severing the only link between the city, home of Birzeit University, and 33 surrounding villages, and destroying telephone and water lines.

• Saying, “We are trying to fix a collapsing situation,” Secretary of State Powell defended his new stance on Iraqi sanctions before the House International Relations Committee.

• U.S. peacekeeping troops in Kosovo fired on ethnic Albanian gunmen near the Macedonian border.

• Algerian Abdel Ghani Meskini pleaded guilty in a Manhattan federal court to helping smuggle explosives from Canada into the U.S. as part of an alleged millennium plot to bomb U.S. landmarks.

• Wolfgang Petritsch, head of the international peace mission in Bosnia, fired the Croat member of Bosnia’s three-man presidency after Ante Jelavic threatened to declare self-rule in Croat-controlled areas.

• India rejected the offer of Kashmir’s umbrella All Party Hurriyat Conference to act as intermediary in the dispute between Pakistan and India.

March 8: As U.S. peacekeeping troops in Kosovo went on the offensive against ethnic Albanian guerrillas near the Macedonian border, the Bush administration told NATO allies it would not allow the troops to cross into Serbia proper.

• The Lebanese army announced it had detained 12 people, including a Palestinian officer, accused of being part of a “terrorism and spy network” and gathering information on Hezbollah for Israel.

March 9: Washington informed Belgrade that U.S. aid to Yugoslavia’s new democratic government was contingent upon the arrest and imprisonment of former President Milosevic by the end of the month, when President Bush must certify to Congress that Belgrade is cooperating with the Dayton agreement.

March 10: In his first major speech since the al-Aqsa intifada erupted Sept. 28, President Yasser Arafat called for the resumption of peace talks based on previous negotiations and for Israeli military “de-escalation.” The Palestinian Legislative Council meeting, held in Gaza and the first in more than five months, took place after Israel lifted travel restrictions on legislators.

• Pakistani and Egyptian officials and clerics traveled to Afghanistan to urge the preservation of two historic Buddhas and other pre-Islamic statues.

March 11: Saying, “No pressure can make me give up this path,” Iran’s President Mohammad Khatami defended his reform measures.

March 12: Palestinians called for a U.N. observer force armed with cameras.

• In Kuwait, a U.S. jet fighter participating in military exercises missed its target and accidentally dropped three 500-pound bombs near an observation post at the Udairi training range, killing five U.S. military personnel and a New Zealander, and injuring seven people.

March 13: Palestinian Environment Minister Dr. Yousif Abu-Safiya accused Israel of pumping half a million cubic meters of waste water and sewage into a Gaza Strip riverbed over the past two weeks.

March 14: Calling it “a good will gesture,” Israel’s security cabinet eased travel restrictions, allowing raw materials to enter the Palestinian territories, as well as freedom of movement “dependent on security conditions.” In Ramallah, Palestinian demonstrators briefly overran an Israeli checkpoint, filling in the trench dug across the road and reopening it to traffic. Israeli soldiers then retook the position, firing tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets to disperse the demonstrators, wounding 10.

• As elite Yugoslav troops assumed positions in a NATO-arranged buffer zone along the border with Kosovo, ethnic Albanian rebels fought their way west toward Macedonia’s second-largest city, Tetovo.

March 15: As Secretary of State Powell said he was “concerned about anti-Americanism” and told the House Budget Committee that Israeli Prime Minister Sharon should be given more time to develop a negotiating policy, Sharon’s office announced the arrest of three alleged members of Fatah’s Force 17 brigade.

• Israeli Foreign Minister and Nobel Peace Laureate Shimon Peres met with the Security Council to argue against a U.N. observer force in the West Bank and Gaza.

• While continuing to bar Palestinians from Israel, Israeli troops began opening roadblocks in the West Bank and Gaza.

• Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski threatened to send in the army to wage all-out war against ethnic Albanian rebels.

• Amid U.S. protests, Iranian President Khatami visited Russia’s Izhora nuclear reactor factory in St. Petersburg.

• Demanding an end to Russia’s military campaign in Chechnya, self-proclaimed Chechen rebels hijacked a Russian airliner and forced it to fly to the holy city of Medina in Saudi Arabia.

• A Briton and an Egyptian were slightly injured in an explosion in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

• Iraq freed 27 Iranian prisoners held since the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

March 16: Wounding 12, Israeli troops fired rubber-coated steel bullets at Palestinians protesting Israel’s blockade of West Bank and Gaza cities and towns.

• Mortar shells exploded in the city center as Macedonian police units and ethnic Albanian rebels battled for control of Tetovo.

• The hijacking of a Russian jetliner ended as Saudi commandos stormed the plane on the runway in Medina, freeing more than 100 passengers but leaving one passenger, a flight attendant and a teenage hijacker dead. Two hijackers survived the assault.

March 17: A senior National Liberation Army (UCK) official said ethnic Albanian rebels intended to seize control of western Macedonia, which borders Kosovo and where ethnic Albanians are the majority.

• In an effort to shore up prices, OPEC oil ministers meeting in Vienna agreed to cut oil production by 4 percent.

March 18: Macedonia ordered a general mobilization of reservists to combat ethnic Albanian guerrillas.

• Tehran’s Revolutionary Court banned the Freedom Movement, Iran’s only formal opposition group, and closed four pro-reform newspapers.

March 19: After calling for an end to violence in an address at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Secretary of State Powell urged visiting Israeli Prime Minister Sharon to ease restrictions on Palestinians.

• NATO pledged to deploy more peacekeeping troops to Kosovo’s border with Macedonia.

• As part of its program to meet requirements for EU admission, Turkey’s cabinet approved a 1,000-page document outlining political, economic and legal reforms. Not included were full linguistic rights for Turkish Kurds, civilian control of the armed forces, or withdrawal of Turkish troops from Cyprus.

• Visiting Taliban envoy Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi delivered a letter to President Bush calling for improved U.S.-Afghan relations through the lifting of sanctions and provision of humanitarian aid, and negotiations over the status of exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.

March 20: Following a White House meeting with Prime Minister Sharon, President Bush told reporters the U.S. “will not try to force peace…[but to] facilitate peace.” In separate remarks, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher criticized Israeli plans to build some 3,000 new housing units for Jews only on the outskirts of Arab East Jerusalem.

• As at least eight Palestinians and three Israelis were wounded in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinian negotiators urged the U.S. to pressure Sharon to accept U.N. Resolutions 232 and 338.

• With anti-American sentiment high because of U.S. support for Israel, Egypt’s Muslims and Christian Copts alike objected to the visit of three members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Commented Coptic parliamentarian Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour, “I am not sure the U.S. should [be] or is the judge of the moral standards and ethics in this world.”

• Ending a 17-year diplomatic breach, Libyan Ambassador Mohammed Abdul Quasim al Zwai presented his credentials to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.

March 21: Despite Palestinian requests that it continue, the Bush administration ended the CIA’s role as broker between Israeli and Palestinian security services.

• On its second visit to the region, the Mitchell fact-finding panel met with Israeli Foreign Minister Peres before touring Gaza and meeting with Palestinian President Arafat.

• Margalit Har-Shefi, a friend of Rabin assassin Yigal Amir, began a nine-month jail sentence for failing to report Amir’s intention to kill the Israeli prime minister.

• Hours before a government ultimatum to lay down their arms was due to expire, ethnic Albanian rebels declared a unilateral cease-fire in Macedonia. Macedonia rejected the offer, however, saying it would proceed with a military offensive to oust ethnic Albanian rebels from recently occupied villages.

• Visiting Damascus, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi called for a broad alliance of Arab and Islamic countries to drive Israel out of occupied Arab lands.

• Pakistan’s military government arrested 28 politicians with the 18-party Restoration of Democracy alliance planning a rally against military rule.

March 22: As Macedonian forces resumed shelling ethnic Albanian rebel positions in the hills about Tetovo, and police in the city killed two ethnic Albanian men at a checkpoint, top EU officials urged the government to use restraint against the guerrillas and step up talks with elected Albanian officials on political change.

• Kofi Annan announced he would seek a second term as U.N. secretary-general.

March 23: As President Arafat telephoned Secretary of State Powell to urge the U.S. to apply pressure on Israel, a Palestinian policeman was killed in the Gaza Strip and, in the West Bank town of El Bireh, hundreds of Palestinians burned in effigy Israeli Prime Minister Sharon, whose government confirmed plans for a new Jewish settlement of 6,000 houses south of Jerusalem.

• Palestinian President Arafat allowed to reopen the Ramallah bureau of the Oatar-based Al Jazeera satellite TV network, closed for five days after airing a promotion for a documentary on Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon which showed a political opponent of Arafat holding a poster of the PLO leader with a shoe dangling over Arafat’s face.

• After an outcry by Arabs and Jews alike protesting the meeting of Holocaust revisionists, the Lebanese government cancelled a planned March 31 conference on “Revisionism and Zionism” co-sponsored by the U.S.-based Institute for Historical Review and the Swiss group Vérité et Justice.

• Arresting at least 200 protesters, Pakistani police in Lahore quashed an attempted rally against the military regime of Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

• Saying, “It’s classic. The Americans always come in too late,” a senior adviser to Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski called for a stronger U.S. diplomatic role in the conflict with ethnic Albanians.

• Belgrade turned over to the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague Bosnian Serb Milomir Stakic, accused of planning and establishing detention camps in 1992 and 1993.

March 24: Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian south of Bethlehem during a day of demonstrations by Palestinians and Israeli Arabs protesting road closures in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Several people were injured when more than 500 people attempted to break through a roadblock on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

• For the first time in 10 days of fighting, Macedonia used attack helicopters against ethnic Albanian rebels.

• Three car bombs exploded in southern Russian towns near the border with Chechnya, killing 21 people and wounding more than 140.

• FBI Director Louis Freeh reportedly persuaded the Justice Department to transfer the investigation of the 1996 bombing in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia of the Khobar Towers military residence from the Washington U.S. attorney’s office to Richmond, VA federal prosecutors.

March 25: Hours before meeting the visiting Mitchell commission, Israeli Prime Minister Sharon called the Barak government’s agreement to the inquiry an “historic mistake” adding, “no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the state of Israel on trial.”

• Arab foreign ministers gathered in Amman in advance of an Arab summit failed to persuade Iraq and Kuwait to agree to a compromise solution to their dispute.

• Macedonia launched a major offensive against ethnic Albanian guerrillas, setting farmhouses and cars on fire as they attacked rebel strongholds in the hills above Tetovo.

March 26: Following the sniper shooting of an Israeli settler’s 10-month-old daughter and the wounding of her father and brother in Hebron, Israeli soldiers and settlers attacked the Palestinian neighborhood of Abu Sneinah with artillery and machine-gun fire, wounding at least seven Palestinians.

• Belgrade police arrested seven allies of former President Slobodan Milosevic.

• In what was described as a “tactical retreat,” Muslim rebels abandoned their positions in the face of the Macedonian offensive.

• Taliban soldiers showed foreign journalists the demolished statues of two enormous Buddhas carved into the Bamiyan mountainside in the 5th century.

• Russia and Kazakhstan began pumping oil through a newly completed $2.6 billion Tengiz-Novorossiysk pipeline.

March 27: The U.S. vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a U.N. observer force to protect Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and Gaza.

• Addressing the opening in Amman of the first Arab League summit since Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan criticized Israel’s “continued occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territory and…its excessively harsh response” to the six-month-old Palestinian intifada. Urging Arabs to recognize that many Israelis “believe…their existence was under threat,” Annan called for renewed peace talks.

• Two bombs exploded in Jerusalem hours apart, killing a suspected suicide bomber and wounding more than 20 people.

March 28: After a third terrorist bombing in two days, Israeli helicopters, tanks and gunships attacked Force 17 targets in Gaza and Ramallah. The missile attacks killed at least three Palestinians and wounded two dozen.

• The two-day Arab League summit ended with pledges of $240 million in financial aid for Palestinians, but no consensus on a call to lift sanctions on Iraq, due to Baghdad’s insistence that Arab countries ignore the sanctions, and its refusal to apologize for its invasion of Kuwait.

• As Israeli warplanes flew overhead, Lebanon began pumping water from the Hasbani River to the village of Wazzani in former Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon.

• Yugoslavia’s ambassador to the U.S., Milan Protic, pleaded for more time for Belgrade to arrest former President Milosevic without losing U.S. aid.

• Macedonia launched a second offensive against ethnic Albanian guerrillas, attacking a rebel stronghold near the capital, Skopje.

• Five of nine international aid workers were freed in Mogadishu a day after they were seized in a raid by gunmen loyal to Somali warlord Muse Sudi.

March 29: At his second news conference as president, George W. Bush told Palestinian President Arafat “loud and clear” to stop the violence

• As Israeli soldiers in Gaza killed a Palestinian policemen and two teen-age boys, wounding eight more, President Arafat said the intifada would continue despite Israeli attacks on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

• Fighting between Macedonian security forces and ethnic Albanian rebels spilled over into Kosovo.

• The U.N. World Food Program warned that famine threatened more than three million Sudanese, and that thousands could die by July.

March 30: As Arabs living in Israel held peaceful Land Day protests, Israeli soldiers killed six Palestinians and wounded more than 100 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

• In the first strike since Feb. 16, U.S. warplanes attacked an air defense site in southern Iraq.

March 31: Serbian special forces stormed the home of former President Milosevic in an attempt to arrest him by the U.S. deadline for a cutoff of aid.

< Prev		Next >