Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 2000, pages 97-100

Facts For Your Files

A Chronology of U.S.-Middle East Relations

Compiled by Janet McMahon

July 1, 2000: A Revolutionary Court in Shiraz convicted 10 of 13 Iranian Jews of spying for Israel, sentencing them to prison terms ranging from 4 to 13 years. Two Iranian Muslims were convicted of aiding the spy ring and sentenced to two and four years in prison. Three Jewish and two Muslim defendants were acquitted.

• A day after sentencing 42 former members of Israel’s proxy South Lebanon Army to prison terms ranging from several months to 15 years, a Lebanese military court sentenced 42 more SLA members, with former brigade leader Emile Yussef Nasr receiving a 120-year sentence.

• Egyptian authorities detained Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an American University in Cairo sociology professor who holds dual U.S.-Egyptian citizenship, on charges of accepting foreign funds for a documentary on elections that allegedly harmed Egypt’s image.

July 2: Clinton administration officials charged that Iran had opened its strategic Qeys Island for secret transfers of illicit Iraqi oil to ships evading the U.N. blockade.

July 3: Meeting in Gaza, the Palestinian Central Council decided that a Palestinian state should be declared by Sept. 13.

• In a series to truck bomb attacks Chechen rebels killed at least 37 Russian soldiers and wounded 74.

• Saudi Arabia announced it would increase oil production by 500,000 barrels a day if crude oil prices remained at their current level of more than $30 a barrel.

July 4: The Iraqi National Accord announced it was quitting the umbrella Iraqi National Congress, citing among its reasons the London-based INC’s close association with the U.S.

• In a 16-page report posted on the Palestinian Authority’s Web site, President Yasser Arafat detailed his administration’s investment portfolio.

• Calling the proposal “unacceptable,” India’s cabinet rejected a demand for political autonomy by the elected state legislature in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

July 5: Saying, “There is clearly no guarantee of success,” U.S. President Bill Clinton invited Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Arafat to a summit meeting at Camp David the following week.

• Along with Malcolm Hoenlein, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish organizations, relatives of some of the Iranian Jews convicted of spying for Israel held an hour-long White House meeting with President Clinton and his aides to discuss ways to pressure Tehran for their release.

• Turkey’s highest appeals court upheld the one-year prison sentence of Islamist former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan for “inciting racial hatred” in a 1994 speech.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin made a surprise visit to the Mozdok military base near Chechnya to assess the deteriorating security situation following a series of separatist bombings.

July 6: President Slobodan Milosevic rewrote Yugoslavia’s constitution to allow him to run for re-election after his term expires in a year, and sharply reducing the power of Montenegro, Serbia’s fellow republic in the Yugoslav federation.

July 7: U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said UNIFIL peacekeeping troops would be sent to southern Lebanon as soon as Israeli troops ceased making forays into the former occupied zone.

• A Swiss court issued a one-year suspended sentence to an Israeli Mossad agent caught in 1998 trying to install wiretapping equipment on the telephone of a Swiss Lebanese living in a suburb of the capital, Bern. After shaking hands with each of the five judges, the pseudonymous Issac Bental left immediately for Israel.

• Montenegro rejected the changes to the Yugoslav constitution made by President Milosevic and approved by parliament.

July 8: On the one-year anniversary of the police attack on a Tehran University dormitory, Iranian students fought street battles with hard-line vigilantes and riot police firing bullets and tear gas.

July 9: On the eve of Camp David peace talks, three parties deserted Israeli Prime Minister Barak’s six-party coalition government, Interior Minister Natan Sharansky resigned, and Foreign Minister David Levy announced he would boycott the summit.

• Palestinian leaders said they would submit for voter approval any peace agreement reached at the Camp David summit.

• Israeli soldiers near the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom in Gaza opened fire on passing Palestinian cars, killing a woman and wounding five people, after soldiers guarding the illegal settlement mistook the accidental firing of a gun by one of their guards for an attack from a passing vehicle.

• A 10-hour standoff ended when the wife of Pakistan’s deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returned to her home in Lahore after attempting to stage a protest rally against the military government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

July 10: An hour before leaving for Camp David, Israeli Prime Minister Barak narrowly won a Knesset no-confidence vote.

• Rashid Saleh Hemed, the first defendant to stand trial for the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiracy to murder by housing five men suspected in the Dar es Salaam attack.

• By a vote of 97.29 percent, Syrians approved a referendum naming Bashar Al-Assad as the successor to his late father, President Hafez Al-Assad.

• Tehran issued an arrest warrant for accused Israeli spy ring leader Eshaq Belanas, an Iranian Jew who fled his country nine years ago, possibly to the U.S.

• President Mohammad Khatami arrived in Germany on the first state visit by an Iranian leader since the 1979 revolution.

• American aid worker Mary MacMakin, 72, along with seven of her employees, were arrested in Kabul following the publishing of an edict banning the employment of Afghan women by international relief agencies.

• Israeli President Ezer Weizman resigned from office following a May finding of financial misdealings.

July 11: U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian summit talks opened at Camp David, MD.

• In Germany, Iranian President Khatami said a “new turn” had taken place in U.S.-Iranian relations but urged the U.S. to take bolder steps to improve ties.

• A U.S. federal judge ordered Iran to pay $327 million to the families of two Americans killed in a February 1996 suicide bombing of a Jerusalem bus.

• The Palestinian High Court ordered the release of Prof. Abdel-Sattar Qassim, jailed for criticizing President Arafat.

• Turkish police arrested 15 Kurdish members of the People’s Democracy Party, the country’s main legal Kurdish party.

• On the fifth anniversary of the fall of Srebrenica, some 3,000 Bosnian Muslim survivors and relatives of victims, traveling in a heavily guarded bus convoy through crowds of jeering Serbs, returned to attend a memorial service in the neighboring town of Potocari, where Bosnian Serbs rounded up and later massacred more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys.

• An Iranian military court acquitted former Tehran police chief Brig. Gen. Farhad Nazeri and 17 other police officers for the 1999 raid on a Tehran University dormitory that left one student dead and at least 20 injured.

July 12: Israeli Prime Minister Barak and Palestinian President Arafat held an impromptu pre-dinner meeting at Camp David.

• Israeli authorities at Ben-Gurion Airport detained then deported Yusuf Islam, the British former singer Cat Stevens, who converted to Islam.

July 13: At Camp David, Prime Minister Barak announced Israel’s formal decision to suspend its sale of Phalcon jets to China.

July 15: Fistfights erupted for more than three hours in Hebron after Jewish settlers threw stones at Palestinians, accusing them of destroying their Sabbath rest.

• Saudi Arabia began pumping an extra 500,000 barrels of oil a day.

• Iran successfully test-fired its medium-range Shahab 3 missile.

July 16: More than 100,000 Jewish right-wingers and settlers from throughout Israel demonstrated in Tel Aviv to demand that Prime Minister Barak quit the Camp David summit before making any further concessions to the Palestinians.

• Three weeks after a gunman opened fire in one of its offices in Baghdad, the U.N. withdrew its international observers from southern Iraq because of safety concerns.

July 17: As the first week of Camp David talks drew to a close with no sign of agreement and rumors of a $40 billion price tag, congressional leaders warned President Clinton to keep them “fully apprised” before committing the U.S. to bankrolling an agreement.

• Pledging to reform the country’s economy, Bashar Al-Assad was sworn in as Syria’s new president.

• Seven people were injured, 40 arrested and seven houses burned as Palestinian residents of the West Bank city of Qalqilyah battled migrant Gazan laborers for a second day.

• Saying he was boycotting his trial on charges of corruption, former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif refused to testify before a special anti-corruption court.

July 18: Thousands of Serbs blocked roads in the divided Kosovo city of Mitrovica to protest the previous day’s arrest by U.N. peacekeepers of Dalibor Vukovic on charges of setting fire to ethnic Albanians’ cars.

July 19: After delaying his trip to a G-7 meeting in Japan, President Clinton, in a late-night statement, said the Camp David summit had failed.

July 20: Explaining, “We discovered nobody wanted to give up,” President Clinton announced that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators would remain at Camp David and meet with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright during Clinton’s four-day absence.

• Meeting in Damascus, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and Jordanian King Abdullah agreed to revive a joint economic commission and boost commercial exchanges.

July 21: In a series of raids in the Charlotte, NC area, federal officials arrested 18 people alleged to have conspired to aid the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah with funds raised through illegal cigarette trafficking.

• Kuwait’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah ruled out the establishment of political parties, saying they would damage unity in the emirate, the only Gulf monarchy with an elected parliament.

• The top appeals court for the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague rejected the appeal of Bosnian Croat commander Anto Furundzija and upheld a landmark ruling establishing rape as a war crime.

July 22: Palestinian demonstrators in the West Bank and Gaza Strip demanded that President Arafat stand firm on the issues of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.

• Tanzania’s High Court released Rashid Saleh Hemed, a suspect in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombing, on $25,000 bail and ordered him to remain in Dar es Salaam.

• A special government anticorruption court sentenced deposed Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, already serving a life prison term, to 14 years of hard labor and a fine of $370,000, and banned him from politics for 21 years.

July 23: Upon his return from Japan, President Clinton met separately with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators at Camp David.

• Pope John Paul II, in his weekly Sunday address, called for “a special statute internationally guaranteed [to] preserve the most sacred areas” of Jerusalem.

• Following the killing of 31 people in four days, Algerian troops attacked Islamist rebel hideouts east of Algiers, killing 28 militants.

July 24: A Pentagon memo announced that the Defense Intelligence Agency would no longer review weapons sales to Israel to assess the likelihood of illegal weapons transfers to third countries, such as China.

• Following confirmation that remaining Israeli border violations had been removed, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and Prime Minister Salim Hoss agreed to the deployment of United Nations peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon.

• Saying it was ready to hold peace talks with India, Kashmir’s pro-Pakistan Hizbul Mujahedeen declared a unilateral three-month cease-fire.

• U.N.-sponsored talks on Cyprus resumed in Geneva after a 12-day break.

• As Kremlin envoy Lt. Gen. Vladimir Bokovilov said he was prepared to meet with Aslan Maskhadov, Chechnya’s last elected president, Chechen rebels, in a rare daylight attack, ambushed a Russian police column in the center of the capital, Grozny, killing at least three and wounding 17.

• Egypt freed 500 Islamist militants who renounced their violent struggle to overthrow the government.

July 25: Camp David negotiations broke down over the issue of Jerusalem. President Clinton praised Israeli Prime Minister Barak for his “particular courage, vision and an understanding of the historical importance of this moment,” saying later that he believed the Israeli leader had been more willing to compromise than President Arafat.

• U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen accused Israel of violating its border with Lebanon.

July 26: As U.S. congressional leaders threatened to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority if it declares statehood Sept. 13, President Arafat returned to a hero’s welcome in Gaza City after refusing Israel’s “concession” on Jerusalem of religious control only over the Haram al-Sharif. Although Israeli Prime Minister Barak received a more divided welcome, both leaders vowed to continue to seek an agreement. Meanwhile, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. David Ivry said “now…the United States should move its embassy to Jerusalem.”

• Moderate Iranian President Mohammad Khatami announced he would seek re-election in May.

• Following a Moscow meeting with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, Russian President Putin said he would press for an end to U.N. sanctions against Iraq, but urged Baghdad to allow the resumption of U.N. weapons inspections.

• Vowing to continue its fight against Indian control of Kashmir, the Mutahidda Jihad Council, an alliance of Pakistan-based militant groups, suspended member organization Hizbul Mujahedeen.

• Syria reportedly began freeing scores of political prisoners on orders from President Bashar Al-Assad.

• Ethnic Albanian and moderate Serb leaders meeting in Virginia reached agreement on a Pact Against Violence for Kosovo.

July 27: President Milosevic announced Sept. 24 presidential, parliamentary and local elections for Serbia and its fellow Yugoslav republic of Macedonia.

July 28: Appearing on Israeli television, President Clinton warned President Arafat that the U.S. would review its “entire relationship” with the Palestinians if an independent state is declared Sept. 13, and hinted that he was ready to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, saying he had “always wanted to do it.”

July 29: President Arafat embarked on a post-Camp David tour of European and Arab states to seek support for the Palestinian position.

• U.N. peacekeepers began a limited deployment in southern Lebanon.

July 30: At a rally in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah chief Said Hasan Nasrallah threatened to destroy the U.S. Embassy in Israel if it is moved to Jerusalem.

• Christian former President Amin Gemayel, who took office during Israel’s 1982 invasion, returned to Lebanon after eight years in exile.

July 31: Palestinian President Arafat called for a special meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to discuss Jerusalem.

• In a stunning upset, the Knesset elected as Israeli president obscure Likud Party member Moshe Katzav over former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, supported by current Prime Minister Barak, who, meanwhile, survived a no-confidence vote.

• An Iranian court sentenced editor Mohammad Reza Zohdi of the banned Arya newspaper to four months in prison for “insulting officials and government organizations” and “disturbing public opinion.”

• Russian President Vladimir Putin accepted an invitation to visit Libya.

Aug. 1: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met in Rome with the Vatican’s foreign minister, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, saying afterwards that the internationalization of Jerusalem, which the Vatican supports, had not been seriously considered at the recent Camp David talks.

• A U.S. military court in Germany sentenced Army Staff Sgt. Frank Ronghi to life in prison without parole for raping and murdering Merita Sahbiu, an 11-year-old ethnic Albanian girl, while serving on a NATO peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.

• The family of Israeli-American Ira Weinstein, killed in a 1996 Jerusalem bus bombing, filed a $330 million suit against Syria, alleging that Damascus had provided crucial support to Hamas, which carried out the bombing.

Aug. 2: As the Knesset approved a call for early elections, Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy resigned in protest of the reported Camp David negotiating positions of Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

• As India prepared for talks with the Kashmiri separatist Hizbul Mujahedeen, 101 people were killed in two days of attacks in the disputed state.

• On the 10th anniversary of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes David Scheffer accused Iraqi President Saddam Hussain of “blackmailing” opposition figures through the “torture and sexual assault” of their relatives.

Aug. 3: Following a meeting between Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and visiting Israeli Prime Minister Barak, Foreign Minister Amr Mousa said that while Egypt was willing to help Israel reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians, it remained firm in its support for President Yasser Arafat on the issue of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, President Arafat met in South Africa with former President Nelson Mandela.

• Their faces covered, representatives of Hizbul Mujahedeen held a 105-minute meeting with Indian Home Secretary Kamal Pande to discuss the Kashmir insurgent group’s unilateral cease-fire.

• Inflicting heavy causalties on the opposition forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud, Taliban militia overran most of Ishkamish, severing a vital supply route of Massoud’s troops in far northern Afghanistan.

Aug. 4: After confirming that the last Israeli encroachments on its territory had been removed, Lebanon approved the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers along the Lebanese-Israeli border.

• Testifying before the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, former Bosnian Serb Gen. Radislav Krstic accused former Commander-in-Chief Ratko Mladic, still at large, of personally overseeing the massacre of thousands of Muslims at Srebrenica.

Aug. 5: Hezbollah troops turned over former Israeli and SLA strongholds and observation posts to UNIFIL peacekeeping troops deploying in southern Lebanon.

Aug. 6: Shas Party leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef criticized Israeli Prime Minister Barak for trying to make peace with “snakes” (Palestinians) and described Holocaust victims as “reincarnations of the souls of sinners.”

• Egyptian prosecutors accused detained Egyptian-American Professor Saad Eddin Ibrahim of espionage for giving a talk in the U.S. six years earlier.

• Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered a halt to parliament’s attempt to modify the country’s restrictive press law.

Aug. 7: Israeli troops fired across the Fatima Gate border at youths throwing stones from Lebanon, wounding a 13-year-old boy and two journalists.

• The Kashmiri separatist Hizbul Mujahedeen said all hopes for peace had been dashed by Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s statement in parliament that any peace agreement in Kashmir would be bound by India’s constitution, which prohibits secession of Kashmir.

Aug. 8: Vice President Al Gore named as his running mate Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), America’s first Jewish vice presidential candidate.

• Citing India’s refusal to include Pakistan in negotiations on Kashmir, the leader of Hizbul Mujahedeen, Syed Salahuddin, ended talks with India and called off the organization’s unilateral cease-fire.

• Iran’s hard-line judiciary closed Bahar, the country’s last reformist newspaper.

• Following a politically charged trial, Malaysian former Deputy Prime Minster Anwar Ibrahim was convicted of sodomy.

• Indonesian prosecutors formally filed corruption charges against former President Suharto, accusing him of costing the state more than half a billion dollars during his 32-year rule.

Aug. 9: For the first time in 20 years, and 10 weeks after the withdrawal of Israeli occupation troops, Lebanese security forces deployed in southern Lebanon.

Aug. 10: Top Israeli and U.S. defense officials met in Washington for “very productive” talks on a memorandum of understanding to “codify the strategic relationship” between the two countries.

• Israeli police sealed off Jerusalem’s Haram al-Sharif after a dozen Jewish fundamentalists trying to enter the compound on the Jewish holy day commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples clashed with scores of Muslims praying at the site.

• The Hizbul Mujahedeen claimed responsibility for a car bomb explosion in the Kashmiri summer capital of Srinagar which killed at least 11 people and wounded 19, including journalists.

• Despite U.S. criticism, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, on a tour of OPEC countries, held talks in Baghdad with Iraqi President Saddam Hussain.

• Egyptian authorities released on bail Saad Eddin Ibrahim after holding the Egyptian-American academic for 45 days without filing formal charges.

• A group of Bosnian women and children who filed suit against Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was awarded $745 million by a New York federal jury.

Aug. 11: Ending a six-week lull in attacks, U.S. and British warplanes bombed a food storage warehouse in southern Iraq, killing two civilians and wounding 19.

• Nearly two decades after rail connections between the two countries were severed, Iraq resumed rail service to Syria.

Aug. 12: In his first public comment since the failed Camp David talks, Egyptian President Mubarak, while saying he would not “dictate” any decision to Palestinian President Arafat, told the Cairo weekly magazine Rose al-Youssef, “Any compromise over Jerusalem will cause the region to explode.”

• For a second straight day, U.S. and British warplanes bombed the southern Iraqi city of Samawa, damaging a train station and several homes and injuring at least three people.

• After meeting with visiting Venezuelan President Chavez, Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid called for the lifting of international sanctions on Iraq.

• U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, hinting that their 22-year mission might soon end when their latest mandate expires in six months, criticized Beirut for failing to deploy the Lebanese army on the border with Israel.

• The U.N. set Oct. 28 for municipal elections in Kosovo, whose minority Serb and Roma populations overwhelmingly refused to register for the balloting.

Aug. 13: At least 16 people were killed and more than 40 wounded in fighting throughout Kashmir.

• Iran arrested two reformist writers, satirist Ebrahim Nabavi and political writer Mohammed Ghoochani, as they were being honored for their work, bringing the number of writers detained to five in eight days.

• Tehran announced it had freed all prisoners taken during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

• British defense officials accused the French military of blocking a commando operation to arrest Bosnian Serb leader and indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic.

Aug. 15: As Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met for the first time since the failed Camp David talks, Palestinian President Arafat said he and the Palestine Central Council would “reassess” a Sept. 13 declaration of statehood.

• Israeli troops shot and killed 72-year-old American citizen Mahmoud Abdallah, who mistook the troops for burglars while guarding his home at night.

• Calling it a sign of ethnic cleansing, thousands of Kosovo Serbs marched in Mitrovica to protest the closing by NATO peacekeeping troops of a lead smelter which employed hundreds of Serbs but emitted 200 times the accepted level of toxic fumes.

Aug. 16: U.S. warplanes bombed air defense sites in northern Iraq for the second time in three days.

Aug. 17: Reversing its previous day’s decision, Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban said 25 U.N. bakeries employing some 360 widows making bread to feed the poor would be allowed to remain in operation.

• Baghdad’s Saddam International Airport officially reopened.

Aug. 18: Following U.S. envoy Dennis Ross’ meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Barak and with top Palestinian negotiators, each side accused the other of intransigence and said prospects for a new summit meeting were dim.

• The U.N.’s Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights called for an end to the 10-year-old sanctions on Iraq.

Aug. 20: Lt. Col. Jeremiah Mattysse of the U.S. Army Reserve Southwest Intelligence Support Center was reported absent without leave in Israel, allegedly having taken with him bagloads of classified documents.

• The Palestinian cabinet issued a statement that the issue of Jerusalem “is not negotiable.”

Aug. 21: Lt. Col. Jeremiah Mattysse, located at an Isreali hostel, met with U.S. diplomats and Israeli police for more than three hours, saying afterwards, “I’m not a spy.”

• Israeli and Palestinian security forces arrested 23 Arabs, at least one of whom allegedly was affiliated with exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, on charges of planning major attacks intended to disrupt the peace process.

• An Indian army brigadier and colonel were among 12 people killed in fighting in Kashmir.

• In an effort to disrupt voting for delegates to the Russian parliament, separatist guerrillas staged dozens of attacks in the breakaway republic of Chechnya.

Aug. 22: Denying he had fled with classified information, Lt. Col. Jeremiah Mattysse voluntarily boarded a plane from Israel to the U.S. two weeks after going AWOL.

• Jordan’s King Abdullah, on his first official visit to Palestine and Israel, met in Ramallah with President Arafat, then in Tel Aviv with Prime Minister Barak.

Aug. 23: As a two-day meeting of international arms inspection experts convened at the U.N., Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said Baghdad would not permit the new U.N. inspection team to enter the country.

• A Gulf Air jet on a flight from Cairo crashed into the Persian Gulf as it was attempting to land in Bahrain, killing all 143 on board.

Aug. 24: Israeli Prime Minister Barak said that if Palestinian talks fail he would invite the right-wing opposition Likud to join his coalition government. Likud leader Ariel Sharon rejected Barak’s suggestion.

• Iranian President Khatami met with 40 members of the Iranian Jewish community, awaiting an appeals court ruling on 10 Iranian Jews convicted of spying for Israel.

• Afghan Ambassador to Pakistan Maulvi Mohammed Saeed-ur-Rehman Haqqni asked for international recognition, including a U.N. seat, for his country’s ruling Taliban.

Aug. 25: U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan made public a 1999 letter he wrote to Muammar Qaddafi assuring the Libyan leader that the proposed trial of two Libyans for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 would not be used to “undermine” Qaddafi’s government.

• Somalia’s fledgling parliament, meeting in neighboring Djibouti, elected as president Abdiqassim Salad Hasan, who said he would name a cabinet and return to Somalia, where warlords have threatened to block any government.

• Former Serbian President Ivan Stambolic, estranged mentor and now severe critic of Yugoslav President Milosevic, disappeared while on a morning jog in Belgrade.

Aug. 26: Three Israeli soldiers were killed by friendly fire in a late-night raid on the West Bank village of Asira al-Shamaliyah. The elite troops were attempting to arrest leading Hamas militant Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, who was wounded in the fighting but escaped, later turning himself in to Palestinian security officials.

• Israeli police said they had arrested an Orthodox Jewish man in connection with a series of fires in Tel Aviv’s brothel district that killed four women.

• Former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri made a strong showing in the first round of voting in Lebanese parliamentary elections, held in northern Lebanon, Mt. Lebanon and the Chouf Mountains. Lebanese officials denied reports by international observers that the elections were “unfair and unfree.”

• The Philippine guerrilla group Abu Sayaff released five foreign hostages after Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi agreed to pay the Muslim guerrillas $1 million for each hostage released.

Aug. 27: An Iranian police sergeant was killed and four policemen wounded during three days of clashes in the western city of Khorramabad, where more than 10,000 people demonstrated against an order prohibiting the gathering of Iran’s largest pro-reform student organization.

Aug. 28: Meeting in Morocco, foreign ministers of the Jerusalem Committee of the Organization of the Islamic Conference called for the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and demanded Palestinian control of East Jerusalem.

• Israeli and Palestinian police arrested nine Palestinians with possible ties to Hamas leader Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, whom Palestinian officials said they would try for a string of terrorist attacks against Israelis.

• The Netherlands trial of two Libyan agents accused of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 again was adjourned as defense attorneys demanded that the CIA turn over documents on the Libyan defector who is the prosecution’s star witness.

• As Turkish authorities banned women at private teaching institutes from wearing hijab, a state security court dismissed an arrest warrant for prominent Islamic leader Fetullah Gulen on charges that he sought to overthrow Turkey’s secular government.

Aug. 29: Returning to the U.S. from a trip to Africa, President Clinton stopped off in Cairo to discuss the peace process with Egyptian President Mubarak.

Aug. 30: Citing concern that Iraq may attack Israel during the U.S. election campaign, the Pentagon put an Army Patriot antimissile battery on alert at an army base near Frankfurt, Germany.

• The U.S. and other Security Council members persuaded UNMOVIC chairman Hans Blix to postpone his planned Sept.1 announcement that the new U.N. monitoring agency’s weapons inspectors were ready to return to Iraq.

• In the highest-level encounter since the 1979 takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran, U.S. and Iranian legislators met in New York to discuss issues of mutual concern, including ways to reduce hostilities between the two countries.

• The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Dr. Elisha Qimron held the copyright for an important Dead Sea Scroll the scholar had reconstructed.

Aug. 31: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said he did not believe Iraq would attack Israel, adding, “I am not sure that the Patriot missile battery needs to be bothered.”