He did not mention Algeria but the name hovered over us for several minutes like a ghost.He gave me a Pakistani wall poster in Urdu which proclaimed the support of Pakistani scholars for his holy war against the Americans, even colour photographs of graffiti on the walls of Karachi, demanding the ousting of US troops from “the place of the two Holy Shrines (Mecca and Medina)”. He had, he said, received some months ago an emissary from the Saudi royal family who said that Bin Laden would have his Saudi citizenship and passport returned to him and that his family would receive 2 billion Saudi riyals (pounds 339m) if he abandoned his jihad – declared on 23 August – and went back to Saudi Arabia. He had rejected the offer and so had his family, he said.The US was in Saudi Arabia because of its oil but – more importantly – because it feared (“along with the Zionists”) that “they and their local agents would drown in the Islamic uprising”. Of the strict Islamist Taliban militia, which now controls three-quarters of Afghanistan and in whose region Bin Laden now lives, he said that he had “struggled alongside them” since 1979. “We believe that Taliban are sincere in their attempts to enforce Islamic religious law. We saw the situation here before [they took over] and after, and have seen an obvious improvement.”Despite these words, Ossama Bin Laden was unwilling to have me taken back to Jalalabad through the Taliban checkpoints at midnight.

So I spent the night under the stars at his guerrilla camp, close to the massive rock-hewn air-raid shelter that he built during the Russian war. When the Arabs drove me back before dawn next day, they paused by the roadside to pray, kneeling on rugs with their rifles beside them, crying “Allahu Akbar” over the bleak landscape of rivers and snow-capped mountains. And amid the pageant of stars above us, a great comet trailed down the sky with a fiery tail, unseen since the time of the Pharaohs It was, I learned later, the Hale-Bopp comet. “They say that after a comet, there will be a great war,” one of the Arabs said to me.We had driven past the police barracks in Jalalabad at first light but, minutes later, a thunderous explosion tore across the road, incinerating every driver within 100 metres, a massive blast at the local munitions store that killed at least 50 men, women and children and left hundreds wounded. The Taliban were on the streets, beating back relatives of the dead with sticks, a mile-high column of brown smoke belching into the sky. It was not difficult to see how this broken, dangerous nation could engender anger and an acceptance of death; even a desire to turn the weapons once used against the Soviets upon the world’s only surviving superpower..

The suicide bomber who blew himself up yesterday in a cafe in Tel Aviv, killing two people and wounding 47, may have finally ended any lingering hopes of a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, immediately accused Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, of giving the “green light” for the resumption of violence. The bombing, the first for over a year, was claimed by Hamas, the Islamic militant organisation.
The explosion took place as people sat down to lunch in the courtyard of the Apropos Coffee House, on Ben Gurion Boulevard, in the centre of Tel Aviv A man entered carrying two bags. “He looked strange,” said Gad Ben Tzur, a waiter.”I was trying to pick up an order. A second later, there was a tremendous flash and he blew up.”Among the injured were children in fancy dress who were celebrating the Jewish settlement of Purim.

A six-month-old baby dressed in a red and blue clown’s uniform was taken away covered in blood. The two bags carried by the bomber, in keeping with previous attacks, contained ball bearings and nails, in order to kill and wound as many people as possible.The suicide bombing came four days after Israel started to build a Jewish settlement at Har Homa in east Jerusalem on land which was captured in 1967. Asked if the building of the settlement might have led to the attack, Mr Netanyahu said: “I find that line of questioning obnoxious and immoral.”The new settlement and the bombing together make it unlikely that Israel will end its occupation of the West Bank as intended under the interim agreement of 1995.Soon after the bombing, Hamed Bitani, a Hamas leader, addressing a crowd of 10,000 in Nablus, the largest city of the West Bank, said: “I have good news for you. There is a suicide operation in Tel Aviv.” As the crowd reportedly cheered, Mr Bitani continued: “This is the only language the occupiers understand, the language of martyrdom.”Israel closed off the West Bank immediately after the attack. Identity papers found near the remains of the bomber suggest that he comes from Zurif village, near Hebron, which is under Israeli security control.Even before the attack, Palestinian politicians said that because of their inability to stop Har Homa their moderate methods might be replaced by violence. Faisal Husseini, the Palestinian leader in Jerusalem, who had spent the night in a tent at a peace camp he has established on a hill near where Israeli bulldozers are breaking ground for the settlement for 27,000 Jews, said: “People are really convinced that the Israelis are not listening to us. So they may say to us: `Thank you, but stand aside.’”Salah al-Taamari, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said: “Israel fired a bullet into the peace process They want us to declare it dead.

Let them give it the death certificate.”In Hebron, the Palestinian city from which Israeli forces partially withdrew in January, there was confrontation but also co-operation between Israelis and Palestinians. In the morning some 500 boys attacked Israeli troops with stones in the centre of the city. Troops fired back with rubber bullets and and a particularly toxic tear gas, which led to some 30 rioters being taken to hospital. The demonstrators drove the troops, who appear to have been under strict orders not to use live rounds, 100 yards into the Israeli- held zone and cut off 13 Israeli soldiers in a house.Jibril Rajoub, the head of Palestinian Preventive Security, whose headquarters is in Hebron, ended the riot by ordering hundreds of his men in and out of uniform to drive back the rioters.