The Palestinian militant groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Fatah - the latter headed by Yasser Arafat - announced a three-month halt to armed operations against Israel Sunday. The announcement comes after lengthy talks among several Palestinian factions, who were debating a cease-fire proposed by Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas within Israel and the Palestinian territories. All three organizations accepted the truce under intense pressure from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, countries to which the United States has appealed in an attempt to reach a peace settlement in the Middle East. In a joint communique, Hamas and Islamic Jihad said in Gaza that attacks would be suspended as of Sunday. Al Fatah announced in Jerusalem that it would also adhere to the cease-fire.

Bad day for the Saudis By Joel Mowbray (KRT)

It was no wonder that Saudi Arabia's Teflon spokesman Adel al-Jubeir was racing around Capitol Hill on Thursday: two hearings were held simultaneously that afternoon on Saudi Arabia, one on child abductions, the other on the Saudi money trail that leads to terrorism.
The child abduction hearing couldn't have been more timely given the intense news coverage in the past week of Sara Saga. Sara is a 24-year-old mother of two who had spent just over a week holed up in the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with her children. She escaped from her abusive Saudi husband, and she tried to get her children out of the desert prison, receiving powerful media assistance from the Wall Street Journal and Fox News. Sara, who was kidnapped to the kingdom when she was 6 years old, didn't want her children to grow up under a despotic regime as she had been forced to. But her dream of freedom for her children was sadly not realized.
Two days before the hearings, Sara arrived in the United States _ but without her children. State Department officials in Jeddah _ the Saudis' greatest friends _ allowed a Saudi goon squad to enter the U.S. consulate and bamboozle the terrified young mother into signing an "agreement" whereby she essentially forfeited her parental rights. Even though within hours Sara, upon realizing what she had done, wanted to take back what had happened, the fate of five-year-old Ibrahim and three-year-old Hanin had been sealed. Unless her children fare better than the dozens _ or more _ of other American children held hostage in the Kingdom, they will remain trapped there for years.
Although Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar _ the best friend the State Department, and thus the House of Saud, has in the Senate _ tried to downplay the significance of Saudi Arabia in child abduction cases, it was clear to the standing-room-only audience that the hearing was very much about our so-called ally.
The first witness before the committee was actually a fellow senator, Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., who testified about the plight of her constituent, Margaret McClain. Margaret's daughter, Heidi, was kidnapped by her Saudi father in August 1997 _ with the apparent help of the Saudi embassy.
With Heidi, who turns 11 on July 10, almost of marrying age _ some kidnapped American girls have been married off in the Kingdom at age 12 _ Margaret is desperate.
Her visit to see her daughter, which didn't happen until July 2002 after nearly five years had passed, was disastrous.
Margaret's scheduled five-day visit with Heidi was reduced to three hours _ at a McDonald's. Her second visit this year went somewhat better, but Heidi's prospects of reaching freedom don't seem any better.
After Sen. Lincoln finished, assistant Secretary of state for Consular Affairs Maura Harty, whose agency is responsible for handling abduction cases, testified that her office was doing all that it could to help the children. But even though the Saudis received mild criticism from her, the House of Saud has never been pressured by Harty to return the kidnapped American kids.
Although State might not be pressuring the Saudi royal family, Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., certainly are holding a hearing one floor above the session on child abductions, Kyl and Schumer explored the tangled web of Saudi funding for Islamic terrorism. For the Saudis, it was devastating. Despite protests from Saudi-defenders at State and "unnamed" administration officials that the Saudis are helping in the War on Terror, a high-ranking FBI official plainly disagreed.
In testimony that could only be considered damaging for the House of Saud, the FBI's assistant director for counter-terrorism called Saudi Arabia the "epicenter" of terror funding. When asked if that included al-Qaeda, he said, "Yes.”
No amount of money can conceal an increasingly _ glaringly _ obvious reality: the Saudis are not our friends. They not only fund groups who aim to kill us, but they directly imprison Americans, preventing them from leaving the kingdom. The sooner Americans see past the Saudi spin machine, the sooner the Saudi jig will be up.
It is hoped that for 10-year-old Heidi, 5-year-old Ibrahim, 3-year-old Hanin _ and all the other American children trapped in the desert prison _ the truth will set them free. __
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Joel Mowbray (joel@nationalreview.com) is a reporter for National Review and a contributing editor for National Review Online. Readers may write to him at National Review, 215 Lexington Avenue, 4th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10016.
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(c) 2003, Joel Mowbray
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services

U.S.-Pakistan relations follow familiar pattern By: Daniel Sneider Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, got the treatment reserved for the closest of friends this past week _ a visit, with his wife, to the presidential retreat at Camp David, only one step short of a trip to the ranch in Crawford, Texas. The audience was undisguised reward for Musharraf's cooperation in the war on terrorism, from the war in Afghanistan to the hunt for al-Qaeda terrorists who are still hiding in the tribal badlands along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The Pakistani leader was effusive about the "special gesture" in arranging the Camp David meeting, reflective, he said, of the "special relationship" between the two countries these days.
But in reality there is very little that is "special" about this alliance of convenience between a Pakistani military leader and a U.S. administration. All of this is a sadly familiar pattern in our relationship with Pakistan over decades.
A succession of Pakistani military leaders, all of which came to power by overthrowing popularly elected governments, have made themselves useful to the United States. This time there is an added edge _ the threat of nuclear war with India and the possibility that Islamic radicals could gain access to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. While there were smiles at Camp David, American intelligence specialists privately consider Pakistan potentially one of the most dangerous countries in the world.
The problem is that time and again we have bought the same idea _ that military leaders, always portrayed as moderates ready to lead a troubled nation to democracy and progress, are the only answer to Pakistan's ills.
The U.S. embrace of military rule began in the 1950s with Gen. Ayub Khan's government, followed in the 1970s by Gen. Zia ul-Haq, and culminating with its current love affair with Musharraf.
Ayub Khan was supposedly a linchpin of the Cold War alliance of Central Asian nations, including the Shah's Iran, against the Soviet threat. But he was more interested in building up his military to fight India, which he did in a major war in 1965.
Zia executed the democratically elected prime minister of Pakistan in 1979, but he became our darling when he helped organize the mujahedeen resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. When Musharraf overthrew the democratically elected government of Nawaz Sharif three years ago, there was some consternation in Washington. Not least because as army chief, Musharraf had sparked a near war with India in 1999 in Kashmir, only a year after both countries conducted nuclear weapons tests.
All of this was forgotten after Sept. 11 when Musharraf made a fateful decision to ally himself with the United States in the ouster of the Taliban government in Afghanistan and pursuit of al-Qaeda.
But there are limits to this anti-Islamist cooperation. The Pakistanis are happy to arrest Arab terrorists, but they are reluctant to pursue the Taliban, who enjoy the sanctuary of their Pushtun tribal brothers within Pakistan. And they won't fully crackdown on Islamist militants who carry out cross-border terror attacks into Indian-controlled Kashmir.
As for progress toward democracy, the Musharraf government, like its predecessors, stops short of really yielding power.
Musharraf insists on keeping a dual role as president and Army chief of staff, and he may dissolve the limited parliament to keep it that way.
That parliament was elected last fall after Musharraf banned the participation of the heads of the two largest secular parties _ both of which had been ousted from power previously by the army. He effectively aided a coalition of Islamic parties who gained an Unprecedented share of seats and control of provincial governments along the Afghan frontier.
There they are installing Islamic law and encouraging those who give shelter to the Taliban.
What the United States needs is a long-term policy to promote democratization and economic development. Everyone agrees the place to start is basic education, in a country with 60 percent illiteracy where Islamic madrassahs are often the only place parents can afford to send their children. But half of the five-year, $3 billion aid plan the president announced this week is actually for military equipment.
The administration proposes to spend a grand sum of $21.5 million to support primary education and literacy in Pakistan this Year, about a tenth of the cost of a F-22 jet fighter. “They don't have a strategy to deal with Pakistan," comments George Perkovich, a South Asia specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "They have a strategy to hunt al-Qaeda." ___
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Daniel Sneider is foreign affairs columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. Readers may write to him at: San Jose Mercury News, 750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, Calif. 95190-0001, or e-mail him at DSneider@mercurynews.com.
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(c) 2003, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).
Visit MercuryNews.com, the World Wide Web site of the Mercury News, at http://www.mercurynews.com.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

Hyde Schedules Afghanistan Hearing; Questions on Reconstruction Efforts, Security Issues BACKGROUND: More than 18 months after the collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, violence, threats of violence, and what appears to be a slow reconstruction process are undermining the central authority of the Karzai government as it seeks to rebuild a viable and independent nation-state. In November 2002, Congress enacted the Afghanistan Freedom support Act (AFSA), a four-year, $3.3 billion U.S. assistance program to guide U.S. participation in reconstruction efforts. The Karzai government --with assistance from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Afghan National Army (ANA) -- controls limited territory surrounding Kabul, the nation's capital. The conti-nuing influence of local warlords and their desire to maintain their mili-tias has prevented the integration of those forces into the ANA or their demo-bilization. Other, smaller militias have been either unwilling or unable to maintain law and order, Which is hindering donors and NGOs from undertaking needed relief and reconstruction activities outside Kabul. The fragile security situation also discourages commercial activity. Home invasions are common, involving rape, kidnaping and the theft of property. Opium production in Afghanistan, which supplies most of Europe's heroin and is a terrorist-funding source, is increasing in areas of the country bordering Iran.Continue

The tragic legacy of the Six Day War By: Ahmad Faruqui DANVILLE, Calif. _ On June 5, 1967, Israel launched a pre-emptive war against the combined militaries of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Syria.