The American Spectator

p> TELL IT TO THE INTERNATIONAL COURT br> Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s Arafat Removal : /p>

Mr. Tyrrell’s suggestion that the Israelis ship Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to Paris to negotiate with Jacques Chirac shows that Mr. Tyrrell is a typical American cowboy and unversed in the sophisticated ways of the French and other important European statesmen.

Mr. Arafat is the duly elected leader of the Palestinian people having withstood a Democratic election process that would surely have passed muster with Al Gore and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

As such, Arafat, with the rights afforded and guaranteed to an international statesman by the UN, cannot simply be exported, like a case of French brie, to a country not of his choosing, without the action of the UN Security Counsel, or the approval of Muammar Qaddafi or Saddam Hussein.

In the event that Chairman Arafat is deprived of his due process by the Israelis and actually sent into exile in Paris, we would expect that the Israelis would face charges in the International Criminal Court in Brussels.

In addition, the suggestion that M. Chirac should have the time to engage in years of endless negotiations with Chairman Arafat fails to appreciate the accomplishments of Chirac on the world stage and reduces Chirac’s status to that of an inconsequential bureaucrat. Mais, non! He is certainly as accomplished as Kofi Annan or Howard Dean.

p>Finally, Mr. Tyrrell’s gratuitous swipe at Chancellor Schroeder is unconscionable. The Chancellor is a busy European statesman as well, often engaged in high level negotiations with the German Foreign Minister. Does Mr. Tyrrell honestly think that Chancellor Schroeder has time to waste with Arafat between all those appointments at the beauty parlor and tanning salon? br> — John Patterson br> New York