He threw back his head she told the San Diego Union-Tribune

“He threw back his head,” she told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “He was laughing and his eyes were bulging out of their sockets.”Nelson is believed to have broken a lock on the outside of the vehicle, before starting it up, crashing through the armoury gates, and taking off.Neighbours said he had been drinking since his romantic split, and acting strangely.He reportedly had serious financial problems, so much so that his water supply was cut off on the day before the rampage He had been talking about trying to commit suicide.. Then the tank crashed into a central reservation on a freeway, ripping off one of its treads.Nelson, long-haired and in civilian clothes, was shot dead by the police after four officers boarded the tank and cut through its hatch with bolt cutters.A police spokesman said that they repeatedly shouted at Nelson, but he failed to respond to their orders to come out and tried to restart the engine.The smart, modern city of San Diego contains several military bases, so it is not unusual to see tanks on the streets.But as one resident put it: “We don’t expect them to attack us.”Jennifer Pinell, 15, was in the family minivan when Nelson rumbled towards them. The senator, tapping into emotions surrounding Israel’s historic claim on Jerusalem as its capital, received a standing ovation.While his proposal endeared him to the group within the Jewish community with the greatest political and financial clout, sectors of America’s Jewish population with a less metaphysical perception of the Middle Eastern problem viewed the move as cynical and ham-fisted.The Forward, a Jewish newspaper based in New York, said Mr Dole’s efforts “to emerge as the greater champion of Israel” – an American David to Mr Clinton’s Goliath – “would be laughable were it not so blatant a play for positioning in the coming primaries”. The gallery that Mr Clinton and Mr Dole are playing to is America’s Jewish constituency, unparalleled providers of political influence and campaign funds.Mr Dole announced his proposal on 8 May at the annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the single most powerful lobby in Washington. Both sides privately accept the conflict can only be resolved by US-guaranteed security arrangements, perhaps involving deployment of American troops.Even these proposals are arousing fury on the Israeli right. The opposition leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, said this week that Mr Rabin was selling out Israeli interests and warned President Assad not to negotiate with “a government that does not have a mandate to give up the Golan or the Galilee” Such rhetoric, ahead of Israeli elections next year, explains the US desire to placate Mr Rabin and to keep Israel engaged in the peace talks..

That was seen as a sign that President Hafez al-Assad places little faith in American promises of good faith, so crucial to the tortuous negotiations over the Syrian Golan Heights. The Syrians insist on what they call “balanced and equal security measures” on the two sides of the 1967 Golan border.But Israel says this is unacceptable, because reciprocal withdrawal of troops would thin out its defences deep into Galilee. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are the key US allies in the region.Perhaps the most significant effect of the US veto will be felt in Damascus. It came just after the Foreign Minister, Farouq Al-Sharaa, had met President Bill Clinton and the Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, for discussions on how to break the deadlock in talks between Israel and Syria.The Syrian ruling-party newspaper said peace could never come “while American policy endorses the logic of Israel”. The veto fell on a date designated each year as Jerusalem Day by the Islamic Conference Organisation.Mr Arafat’s spokesman said “the United States has lost credibility and confidence in the eyes of the Palestinian people”. The fundamentalist Hamas movement, opposed to the peace talks, said the US backed “a Zionist conspiracy to take over Jerusalem entirely”.

Captured in 1967, it is claimed by Israel as its indivisible capital but sought by Palestinians as the future capital of their own state. Israel and the US may have calculated that the veto would help Mr Rabin fend off right-wing criticism without long-term damage to the Arab participants in the peace talks.They appear to have reckoned without the emotion aroused in the Arab world by issues affecting Jerusalem’s status The city is sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians. A European Commission official said the veto was outrageous and would damage prospects for a trade pact with Israel.The Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, said he was satisfied by the veto and the Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, described the affair as “a lot of noise about a little story”. Negotiations over it are not due to start until next year.Britain and its European partners supported the draft UN resolution, which called on Israel to give up a plan to expropriate 131 acres of land in east Jerusalem to build Jewish housing and a police station. Britain viewed the move as illegal and a breach of Israel’s agreements with the Palestinians.But the US Ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, said the veto was cast because her government believed Jerusalem should be settled only between Israel and the Arabs.In European foreign ministries the veto was seen as proof that the Clinton administration had adopted an uncritical approach as the price for keeping the Israeli Labour party in power, preserving the peace talks and winning Jewish votes in the US elections. The future of the city is perhaps the single most sensitive issue in the Middle East.

BY MICHAEL SHERIDAN

Diplomatic Editor
There was outrage across the Arab world yesterday after the United States exercised its veto for the first time in five years to block a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s decision to confiscate Arab land in Jerusalem.Governments, newspapers and diplomats said the move would damage the Middle East peace talks, reduce the authority of the US as a mediator and diminish the stature of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader.Moderate Palestinian negotiators urged Israel to open talks on the final status of Jerusalem. “I gave Prince Philip a letter requesting help so that I could train as a pilot in England But I never heard from him again. It would’ve been fun, flying around the Himalayas.”Tim McGirk. The only Sherpa to do so,” Mr Banerjee said.Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there I got through to Thukden Philip Sherpa in Kathmandu He wasn’t a doctor. Like many Sherpas nowadays, he works in trekking with tourists. Did Prince Philip ever send him to Britain for school? “My father didn’t speak English that much … so he never got in touch,” Philip explained without resentment.He was in Kathmandu when the royal couple revisited Nepal, and requested an audience He got 15 minutes.