Plo

With a giant poster of deceased leader Yasser Arafat smiling over them, members of the Palestine Liberation Organization's central council gathered here Tuesday to indefinitely extend President Mahmoud Abbas' term until credible elections can be held. The extension, expected to be formally approved today, should provide a degree of short-term stability to the fractured Palestinian movement. But for some, the stopgap measure only papers over an emerging PLO leadership crisis that could become yet another obstacle to peace talks.

WASHINGTON - Foreign political organizations like the Palestinian Liberation Organization and multinational corporations cannot be sued for the torture or murder of persons abroad, including Americans, under the terms of a 1991 U.S. anti-torture law, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday. Only individual perpetrators of such crimes can be held liable, the court said. The decision is a setback for human rights activists who have sought to extend American law to target inhumane conduct aboard.

In response to "The Illusion of Shamir's 'Peace' Plan," Op-Ed Page, March 6: I agree with Uri Avnery's conclusion that it is in the best interest of Israel that the Israelis abandon Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's insincere nonsense and negotiate with the PLO. The problem with Shamir is that unlike his fellow terrorists (former Prime Minister) Menachem Begin and Arafat, he has not, yet, outgrown his terrorist fundamental mentality to become a statesman. SAMI M. ODEH Orange

A day after watching Egypt's regime collapse, Palestinian officials promised Saturday they would elect new leadership in presidential and legislative elections by September, and said that their chief peace negotiator had tendered his resignation. The shakeup appeared to reflect an attempt by the Palestine Liberation Organization to navigate the tidal wave of democratic upheaval spreading through the Arab world and, if possible, to use its momentum to draw international attention to the Palestinian bid for self-determination.

It is time for the noon prayers and the office of the Palestine National Council in Amman suddenly starts emptying. In the corridors, people are hurrying by, completing their absolution before bowing to Allah. For years the council, the Palestinian parliament in exile, and its parent body, the Palestine Liberation Organization, have projected themselves as secular. After all, more than 20% of their members are either Christian or simply atheists. But this is changing.

Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization cannot be legislated out of existence, as some members of Congress seem to be hoping. The congressional efforts, aside from being futile, could significantly harm U.S. efforts to end the bloodshed in the Mideast. It's one thing to issue an expression of support for Israel, as in a resolution being circulated by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee and a Holocaust survivor.

The Palestine Liberation Organization will hold a one-month course in military training for 1,000 Palestinian children, the United Arab Emirates newspaper Al Ittihad said Thursday. The paper said in a report from Aden that the boys and girls all live in Arab states and include for the first time 100 children from Egypt. The paper quoted PLO sources as saying the course will take place at the Palestinian Al Yarmouk camp in the South Yemeni capital next week.

Two gunmen killed the new commander of the PLO's Fatah militia in Sidon and wounded three of his bodyguards Tuesday. It was the second assassination of a ranking PLO official in a month. No group claimed responsibility for the slaying of Col. Anwar Madi, who was picked three weeks ago by Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat to head the militia at the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp, the largest of 13 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon.

Guerrillas loyal to PLO leader Yasser Arafat killed the local commander of a breakaway faction in house-to-house fighting Friday that left 28 other people dead and 52 wounded, police said. The fighting began after the commander of Arafat's Fatah guerrillas in Lebanon was kidnaped by a rival and beaten, Palestine Liberation Organization and police sources said. After his release was won, the commander, identified by the PLO only as Col. Alaa, sought to punish the rebellious faction.

Egypt, Israel's only Arab peace partner, offered to mediate between the Jewish state and the Palestine Liberation Organization today but Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir refused. Butros Butros Ghali, the visiting Egyptian minister of state for foreign affairs, made the offer at separate meetings with Shamir and about 30 leading Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Shamir's spokesman Avi Pazner quoted the hard-line prime minister as saying: "Israel is not interested in negotiations with the PLO, but if Egypt is prepared to encourage local Palestinians to take part in the elections and the negotiating process, that would be extremely helpful."

The kangaroo, a beloved national symbol of Australia, may in fact be an ancient interloper. A study published Tuesday in the online journal PLoS Biology suggests that Australian marsupials — kangaroos, wallabies, Tasmanian devils and more — evolved from a common South American marsupial ancestor millions of years ago. The finding, by researchers at the University of Munster in Germany, indicates that the theory that marsupials originated...

The PLO Executive Committee gave the green light Saturday to indirect Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, but both sides have already expressed deep doubts about whether the U.S.-brokered negotiations will yield results. U.S. Middle East envoy George J. Mitchell will shuttle between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators over the coming four months, hoping to narrow differences in talks that have been stalled for 18 months. The "proximity" talks were pushed by the Obama administration because Palestinians refuse to conduct direct negotiations unless Israel agrees to halt settlement construction on land it seized after the 1967 Middle East War, including in East Jerusalem.

Almost overshadowed in the recent days of diplomatic tussle between the U.S. and Israel is the Palestinian Authority, whose leaders have been watching with concern -- and perhaps a little amusement. It's not often Palestinians get to see the U.S. and Israel clash so publicly. On Wednesday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said his government would not participate in U.S.-brokered indirect peace talks unless Israel halts all housing construction in East Jerusalem -- the issue that has driven a wedge between the U.S. and Israel.

The online open-access journal PLoS Medicine said this week that it would no longer accept for publication reports of research sponsored by tobacco companies. The journal joins two of its sister publications, PLoS Biology and PLoS One, in formally adopting this position, but the announcement might be viewed as self-serving in that the journal has never published such a paper. In fact, PLoS One has published only two. The decision highlights a dispute among journal editors. The leading tobacco-control journal, Tobacco Control, does not ban industry-sponsored research, in part because it does not wish to appear biased.

With a giant poster of deceased leader Yasser Arafat smiling over them, members of the Palestine Liberation Organization's central council gathered here Tuesday to indefinitely extend President Mahmoud Abbas' term until credible elections can be held. The extension, expected to be formally approved today, should provide a degree of short-term stability to the fractured Palestinian movement. But for some, the stopgap measure only papers over an emerging PLO leadership crisis that could become yet another obstacle to peace talks.

Haidar Abdel Shafi, a former Palestinian negotiator, leading nationalist and physician, died of stomach cancer Tuesday at his home in the Gaza Strip, said his son Khaled. He was 88. The charismatic, lanky gadfly to the late Yasser Arafat was most known internationally for leading the Palestinian team with Jordan to the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991 and to peace talks in Washington in the two years following.

Israel has been negotiating indirectly with the Palestine Liberation Organization to exchange Palestinian prisoners for the body of an Israeli soldier, an Israeli Arab educator said Sunday. Ahmed Tibi, who heads the Arab Academic Circle in Arab East Jerusalem, said the United States and other third parties have been involved in the effort. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin denied the report, although Israeli newspapers reported that the PLO will return the body of an Israeli Druze soldier, Samir Asad, captured and believed killed in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

The PLO Central Council, a policy-making arm of the Palestine Liberation Organization, gave Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas preliminary approval for new presidential and legislative elections. The militant group Hamas, which won parliamentary elections last year, immediately threatened to derail a new vote. Abbas, of the Fatah faction, has fired the Hamas-led government, installing a West Bank-based caretaker Cabinet of moderates. Hamas has denounced the moves as unconstitutional.

Civil rights groups criticized the FBI and a suburban school district Thursday for allowing federal agents this fall to question a 16-year-old high school student who had doodled "PLO" on his binder two years ago. A pair of FBI agents interviewed Munir Mario Rashed, a junior at Calvine High School, about the Palestine Liberation Organization and whether he had pictures of suicide bombers stored on his cellphone.