The Palestinian Authority’s official daily says the CIA was behind the Moscow terrorists, as part of a complicated and highly illogical plot to enlist Russia’s support for an attack against Iraq.

“[Russian] President Putin’s ambassador to the Security Council is threatening to vote against the American’s proposed resolution to attack Iraq. This is how we view the operation in the Moscow theater; we are of the opinion that the sympathy and friendship that bond Washington to several Islamic movements in Europe, among them the Chechens, cannot possibly be one-sided and there has to be some sort of repayment of the American friendship by the “Mujahedin” [quotes in source] of Chechnya, Bosnia, Hercegovina and Kosovo. The CIA will never acknowledge its responsibility for this operation which claimed over 170 lives, including those of the perpetrators…. However, the American message reached Moscow and was, perhaps, read the same way by the decision makers in France, who oppose the American pressure in the Security Council and insistently resist giving the Americans an international power of attorney to destroy the most ancient of Arab countries.

“We do not know whether there are members of pro-American organizations in Paris, but we believe that American Intelligence has no need for operatives in France, and we therefore fear a recurrence of a bloody scene in the capitol of [our] friends, the French. We hope they are preparing for such an eventuality, lest it be Moscow first and Paris next.”

Our friends, the French.