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UPI hears ...

Insider notes from United Press International for March 20.


Vice President Dick Cheney may have refused to meet Yasser Arafat, but the Palestinian Authority has its own diplomatic priorities. Two senior Palestinians have arrived in Baghdad: Finance Minister Muhammed al Nashashbi and Trade and Industry Minister Saadi al Krunz. Fearful of a cutoff of European Union funds, on which the Palestinian Authority depends, Arafat is turning to Saddam Hussein as a possible replacement. Arafat being Arafat, he is also looking for some Palestinian leverage in the diplomatic maneuvers that will inevitably precede a possible U.S.-led strike on Iraq, which the Iraqi military seems to assume is close. In a flurry of deployments, they have reinforced the western frontier with Jordan, a grim desert area, and also shifted Republican Guard units north toward Kurdish territory.

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There is some intriguing background to Israel's angry rejection of the letter condemning its attacks on refugee camps from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and to Annan's specific complaint that a U.N. employee, Kamal Handan, had been shot and killed by Israeli troops while escorting wounded from the Tulkarim camp to hospital via ambulance. Israeli military intelligence sources claim to have evidence that al Qaida veterans are running terrorism-training courses at the U.N.-run Ein Hilwe refugee camp for Palestinians in Lebanon. The camp is run and funded by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, 20 percent of whose budget is financed by the United States. The evidence was delivered to Vice President Dick Cheney Tuesday as part of a dossier on al Qaida activity -- with the clear implication that if the United States did not do something about the Ein Hilwe camp, the Israelis would.

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The report from Quetta, Pakistan, home to an American airbase, was ominous; "Some unknown persons fired rockets..." An al Qaida attack? Taliban infiltrators? As with many events in the Northwest Frontier Provinces, the truth lay deeper. Seven rockets were indeed fired late Tuesday at the gas installations in Sui town of Dera Bugti Agency, landing near gas well 7. Jawans (troopers) of the Frontier Corps returned fire, and the attackers escaped. Instead of international terrorists, the rockets were the product of a grassroots labor dispute. The attacks resumed after a nine-month lull. The original bombardments were staged by local tribesmen to pressure gas company officials to hire local unemployed engineers and fund community development schemes. Federal Petroleum Ministry officials hurried to the scene with assurances that the demands would be met, and the attacks halted. Nine months later, with Islamabad distracted by the war on terrorism, local activists decided to remind them of their promises.


European Union watchers have been looking east for the next round of enlargement. But little Iceland is coming up fast from the West, with a new opinion poll showing 91 percent support for joining, on the basis of a new deal to protect its vital fisheries being proposed by Foreign Minister Halldor Asgrimsson. A formal application may have to wait until the anti-EU Prime Minister David Oddson steps down in next year's elections. But some of the EU's prospective new members want Iceland in, since such a new membership would force a reweighting of votes. Under the complex deal reached at the Nice, France, summit 15 months ago, old members Greece, Belgium and Portugal got 22 seats in the EU Parliament, while new members Hungary and the Czech Republic -- with equivalent populations -- got only 20 seats -- and reckon Iceland will force a recount.

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If and when Iceland joins the EU, that would leave only Norway and miniscule Liechtenstein (false teeth capital of the world) as members of the venerable European Free Trade Association. Perhaps it should be wound up. But the EU's long-range strategic planning cell started back in the 1980s by former Commission President Jacques Delors has seen EFTA as a useful option for Russia. It would allow it to merge more closely with the West, without overwhelming the much smaller European states as a full EU member. Originally formed by Britain in the 1950s as a counterweight to the European Economic Community, EFTA provides its members with most of the free trading advantages of being in the EU, without being stuck with its insane Common Agricultural Policy. Nor do EFTA members get to help write the rules.


Defying the usual rules of political correctness over "Mezzogiornismo" -- or being rude about the Italian South -- Italy's defense minister, Antonio Martino, says he feels more defenseless the further south he drives. "In Milan, traffic lights are treated as instructions. In Rome, they become suggestions. In Naples, traffic signals have been reduced to Christmas decorations," he complains.

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