The only thing the "Arab leaders" proved in Beirut was how terribly impotent and inept they truly are -- which certainly doesn't come as too much of a surprise to some of us. Both the Palestinians and the Iraqis have been left essentially defenseless and abandoned. Israeli and American military plans will now proceed knowing the entire Arab world is bewildered, powerless, demoralized, co-opted, and terribly lead.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 27 (AP) - Prince Nawaf bin Abdel Aziz, the director of intelligence for Saudi Arabia and the No. 2 Saudi official at the Arab League summit meeting here, was hospitalized today after suffering a stroke, his colleagues said. An official at the hospital, which is run by the American University of Beirut, said Prince Nawaf was in the intensive care unit.... Prince Nawaf, a brother of King Fahd, was appointed intelligence chief in September. He was finance minister under King Saud, who ruled from 1953 to 1964.

[NEW YORK TIMES - BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 27] - In an extraordinary appeal directed largely to the Israeli people, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia proposed to Arabs today that they pledge as one to accept Israel as their neighbor if it meets three demands.

Those demands, spelled out by the prince at a summit meeting here of Arab states, were Israel's withdrawal from all occupied territories; creation of a Palestinian state, with its capital in Jerusalem; and the return of Palestinian refugees.

The prince's declaration was an attempt to rekindle the desire for a negotiated settlement by holding out the possibility of "normal relations" and security for Israel. But a day of fresh violence in Israel and the disarray of the Arab meeting itself - exceptional even in the stormy history of the gatherings - threatened to overshadow his much promoted, much awaited speech.

In the confusion here, Syria hailed the proposal, but demanded that Arab states sever any current ties with Israel; there was last-minute squabbling over the proposal on refugees; and Lebanon tried to prevent Yasir Arafat from delivering a speech via satellite.

Mr. Arafat, who stayed away for fear that Israel would not allow his return, resorted to Al Jazeera's television network and delivered his speech anyway. He said all Palestinians welcomed the Saudi proposal and expressed the hope that it would lead to resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Aides to the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, said the term "normal relations" was too vague. He has also rejected any right of return for refugees and a full withdrawal from occupied territories.

"We would like to hear directly from Saudis what they mean by normal relations," said Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Mr. Sharon. "That's why we suggested contacts, or that we send a special envoy so that we could learn more about the end game. Does this mean recognition of the right for a Jewish state in the Middle East?"

Prince Abdullah often addresses remarks to the Palestinian people in an avuncular tone, and in today's 10-minute speech he made almost poetic references to Palestinian lands as something that all Arabs treasure.

But the truly remarkable moment came as he sat amid a gathering of Arab kings, princes and presidents and appealed to the Israelis themselves - this from the effective leader of a desert kingdom whose role as guardian of Islam's holiest shrines means that it has long been expected to be the last Arab state to recognize Israel.

"Allow me at this point to directly address the Israeli people, to say to them that the use of violence, for more than 50 years, has only resulted in more violence and destruction," he said.

"Israel, and the world, must understand that peace and the retention of the occupied territories are incompatible and impossible to reconcile or achieve," he said as he reached the heart of his message.

"I would further say to the Israeli people that if their government abandons the policy of force and oppression and embraces true peace, we will not hesitate to accept the right of the Israeli people to live in security with the people of the region."

At one point the prince did finesse the difference between Arab and Western perceptions, saying the future capital should be Al Quds Al Sharif, or Holy Jerusalem, while the English text called it East Jerusalem. A Saudi official suggested that Arabs rarely refer to the geographic division of the city, but that the prince was in no way suggesting that the Palestinians should get anything more than Al Aksa Mosque.

"It's the mosque," this official said. "Everything else is real estate. If you go to the lines of 1967, it's talking about East Jerusalem."

Within hours of the prince's speech, however, another suicide bomber struck in Israel, killing 19 people at a hotel. Word of the attack came just as the early evening session closed and most of the leaders were sweeping off to dinner, so there was little reaction.

Officials here said that given the frequency of such bombings, they did not believe this one was specifically intended to counter the Saudi's message. But the militant group Hamas was quoted in Israeli news media as saying that the attack was intended to disrupt the talks here.

"We all agree that civilians should be spared," said Hesham Youssef, the spokesman for the Arab League. "The situation has been going from bad to worse, and that is why we need the peace initiative, why we need it now." Arab summits are supposed to be all about Arab unity and brotherhood. More often they reflect the reality, with endless squabbling and jockeying for position. Today was exceptional even by the Arab League standards.

In February, when Abdullah first suggested his formula, he offered normalization with Israel. But Syria objected to the word, saying it offered too much too soon to Israeli without any pledge in return.

So today Abdullah used the phrase "normal relations." His vision is that other Arab states will offer those relations once the Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians all conclude their treaties.

Soon after the prince broached the subject of peace, President Bashar Assad of Syria held forth on the subject for about an hour. He repeated the Syrian mantra that no peace was possible until the return of the Golan Heights. "If we talk about land for peace, we talk about the whole land, not a quarter of the land, not half the land, not three-quarters of the land," he said.

In the current absence of any peace agreement, he suggested that all relations be severed. Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania maintain diplomatic ties with Israel, although only Mauritania has kept an ambassador there since the current violence erupted in September 2000.

"We are asking those countries who have relations with Israel just to tell us when they will sever relations with Israel," President Assad said. He noted that more than 1,000 Palestinians had been killed during the intifada. "If this is not enough justification," he asked, "then what is? Are you waiting for half a million Palestinians to be killed?"

Such moments periodically made it seem like the Saudi plan would sink amid the competing viewpoints. President Assad joined other states in condemning what was perceived here as weak American sponsorship of peace negotiations.

The entire peace process had already appeared wobbly even before the first session convened because of Mr. Arafat's absence and, consequently, the absence of almost half the leaders of the 22-member Arab League, including the two key supporters of peace with Israel, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan.

President Mubarak said he stayed away to protest the fact that Mr. Sharon was treating Mr. Arafat like a schoolboy, while the somewhat unconvincing official explanation from Jordan was that the king had the flu. The king's absence was seen by some as expressing his displeasure at the way the Lebanese were handling the Palestinian refugee issue, after Prince Abdullah softened the usual Arab stand by calling for the "return of refugees" rather than the "right of return."

There was much grumbling by delegates about how President Émile Lahud of Lebanon was handling the summit, with some saying he was erecting obstacles where his role as host was supposed to be that of conciliator. In the most extraordinary move, Mr. Lahud rejected an attempt by Mr. Arafat to address the conference live from Ramallah, on the West Bank, where Israel has kept him bottled up for weeks.

Some Palestinian delegates were convinced that the decision reflected Lebanese resentment at Mr. Arafat's role in the 1970's in creating a state within a state in the refugee camps and thus becoming a party in the Lebanese civil war.

The official Lebanese explanation was that Mr. Sharon might try to interrupt the broadcast to address the conference himself.

In either case, confusion reigned as furious Palestinian delegates threatened to walk out.

Arab observers said the problems surrounding the conference reflected ambivalence throughout the Arab world to offering peace to Israel at a time when it seemed poised to reoccupy Palestinian territory by force.

In addition, given the American inability to end Mr. Arafat's house arrest, they said, no one was sure whether they could put faith in the Bush administration's pledges to use the Saudi proposal to renew efforts toward a settlement. "Whatever confusion you see here is a sign that the Arabs are divided," said George Hawatmeh, editor of the Jordanian daily Ar Rai. "They are divided between the need to advance something for the Americans and for Israeli public opinion, versus the lack of conviction that it will achieve anything."

[LONDON - Reuters - March 27] -- An Arabic language newspaper said today that it had received an e-mail claiming to be from Osama bin Laden that attacked a Saudi peace plan for the Middle East and urged the region's Muslims to revolt against their leaders.

Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi, who met bin Laden in 1996, said he thought the e-mail was "most likely" genuine.

Atwan said the message conformed to the style and language of other statements his newspaper had received from bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network.

The e-mail gave no clue to the whereabouts of bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon who has been hunted for months by U.S. forces in his former Afghan cave bases.

Titled "Statement from Sheikh Osama bin Laden on the initiative of Prince Abdullah," the message criticized the peace proposal presented by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah today to an Arab League summit meeting in Beirut. The initiative offers Arab normalization of ties with Israel in exchange for full Israeli withdrawal from Arab land occupied in 1967.

The statement said the Saudi plan was "a Zionist-American one in Saudi clothes."

"The initiative of Prince Abdullah . . . is a conspiracy and another display of repeated betrayals," it said.

The e-mail also paid tribute to Palestinian suicide attacks against Israel and the Sept. 11 attacks.

Bin Laden, a native of Saudi Arabia who was stripped of his citizenship, has repeatedly criticized the oil-rich kingdom's leadership, especially for allowing U.S. troops to be based on the land of Islam's holiest sites. Bin Laden issued a series of videotapes to the media last year, but none has been produced in 2002. A half-brother was quoted as telling an Arabic newspaper last week that bin Laden was alive and had contacted his mother about four weeks ago.

BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 28 (UPI) -- Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat told Arab leaders meeting in Beirut that Israel was preparing to launch a large-scale attack within hours against Palestinian territories, according to Arafat's foreign minister, Faruk Qaddumi, on Thursday.

Speaking to Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh by telephone, Qaddumi reported, Arafat said some 150 Israeli tanks were besieging Ramallah where foreigners had been asked to leave for their own safety.

"Arafat expects Israel to launch a large-scale attack within the coming hours," Qaddumi said. The situation was tense, he said, and American non-governmental organizations in Ramallah were evacuating the West Bank city. Arafat urged the Arab leaders to take measures for a unified and firm Arab position to confront possibilities in the near future.

Observers, Qaddumi said, were expecting harsh retaliation for a Hamas suicide attack that killed 20 people and wounded more than 100 others. The bomb attack was carried out while U.S. special envoy Anthony Zinni was still in the region seeking to get both sides to agree to a cease-fire.

Qaddumi denounced what he termed U.S. hesitation and failure to adopt a firm stand. The call for a cease-fire was a deceitful slogan, he said, adding an Israeli withdrawal has become "inevitable and there is no escape from it as a prelude for a political settlement."

He said the basis of the Israeli-Palestinian settlement should be the implementation of international resolutions which call for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, removal of Jewish settlements, guaranteed freedom of worship, the right of the Palestinians to self-determination and the return of the Palestinian refugees.

The West Bank and Gaza Strip would be placed under U.N. supervision for a transitional period, he said, and a Palestinian state would be established with Jerusalem its capital while the U.N. Security Council would provide guarantees of peace.

The United States was turning a blind eye to Israeli terrorist attacks, he said. "This means that the Arab-Israeli conflict will last a long times as the United States is not taking deterrent measures against Israel and drawing up a time-table for the Israeli withdrawal."

Thursday's summit session also witnessed an Iraqi-Saudi rapprochement when Crown Prince Abdullah entered the conference room hugging Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, deputy president of the Iraqi Revolutionary Council. Both were applauded by the conferees.

Qaddumi and his Palestinian delegation walked out of the summit meeting Wednesday but returned Thursday after intensive efforts by Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries to get them to come back. The Palestinian team withdrew after accusing Lebanese President Emile Lahoud of preventing the broadcast by satellite of a speech by Arafat to the Beirut meeting. The Israelis have confined Arafat to Ramallah for the past four months.

Amid applause, Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri escorted Qaddumi into the summit conference room Thursday. Lahoud welcomed the returned Palestinian delegation, declaring that "Arafat's voice reaches the Arabs and the world through this summit."

In the Palestinian territories, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a top aide to Arafat, told reporters the Palestinian Authority chairman had received telephone calls from European Union foreign policy representative Javier Solana, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan; and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

Abu Rudeineh said that the three leaders and Arafat discussed the explosive situation in the region, adding that the calls were part of international efforts to end the ongoing bloodshed between Israel and the Palestinians.

In preparation for the expected Israeli attack, all PA civil, security and police buildings and headquarters in the Gaza Strip were evacuated. Israeli army Apache helicopters flew over Gaza City, but did not attack.

[FOX NEWS - WASHINGTON - 27 March] - The Rev. Jesse Jackson is contemplating involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and has had "private conversations" with both sides about the possibility, according to Jackson's Rainbow Push Coalition office.

Jackson initiated the idea and the telephone conversations with the two sides, according to sources familiar with the conversations.

State Department officials said the department has not been informed about Jackson's offer and reacted skeptically about whether it would really happen.

They can't control private citizens' travel but they can certainly "suggest" to the parties that any involvement in mediation efforts aside from that being offered by the Bush administration right now would not be appreciated, State Department sources said.

Currently, special envoy Anthony Zinni is in the region on behalf of President Bush negotiating a peace settlement. In Atlanta Wednesday, Bush said Zinni was making progress.

"I know we're making very good progress. Whether or not we're able to sign an accord soon or not remains to be seen. But progress has been made and that is where the focus of this administration is."

Last time Jackson was seeking a role in an overseas conflict - with the Taliban - he called Secretary of State Colin Powell to discuss it. It was never revealed how Powell responded to Jackson's idea, but Jackson's diplomatic role did not come to fruition.

Jackson has been on the diplomatic front before. In 1999, he negotiated the release of three captured U.S. soldiers during the Kosovo conflict. He negotiated with Syria in 1984 for the release of a U.S. Navy pilot, and was dispatched by President Clinton to Sierra Leone in 2000 to help prevent a return to civil war.

Hassan Abdel Rahman, the Palestinian representative in Washington, said he had not heard about Jackson's overture, but added Jackson certainly "has plenty of phone numbers" of Palestinians in the region. Israeli officials said everyone is welcome to visit their country and confirmed that Jackson had made some calls to his acquaintances there.