VOL. XLV

No 18

6 May 2002

The Political Scene

In what looks suspiciously like a trade-off, the Israelishave lifted their siege of Yasir Arafat in Ramallah and successfully fended off the dispatch of a UNfact-finding mission to the West Bank. There are reports of two peace plans for the region (Saudiand Saudi/US), and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is promising a third. Itturns out that 11 September hijacker Muhammad Attaprobably did not meet with an Iraqi agent in Prague last year after...