The United States has never officially relinquished its early support of the corpus separatum. On 23 October 1995, the Congress passed the advisory Jerusalem Embassy Act saying that "Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel; and the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999". Since 1998, the congressional suggestion to relocate the embassy from Tel Aviv has been suspended semi-annually by every sitting President, each time stating that this "is necessary to protect the national security interests of the United States".