The blast outside the UN headquarters in Baghdad, which killed top UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and at least 16 others, was the deadliest attack in Iraq since coalition troops ousted Saddam Hussein. The suicide bomb that blew apart a bus in central Jerusalem six hours later, killing 20 passengers, was the bloodiest Palestinian attack since the June 4 agreement on a "road map" to peace brokered by US President George W. Bush.

Significantly, the two attacks come just as major milestones were being passed on both the road map to peace and Iraq's road to recovery. Israel was about to hand over two West Bank towns to the Palestinians. In Iraq, coalition troops were basking in the capture of Saddam Hussein's former vice-president, Taha Yassin Ramadan. The timing is no coincidence, of course. Driven by their insane millenarian fantasies in which Americans and Jews shall be wiped from the earth, the last thing the terrorists can abide is a measured progress towards peace and understanding.

Neither was the targeting of the UN by the terrorists in Baghdad coincidental. Only last week, the UN Security Council gave its approval to the recently formed Iraqi Governing Council, which has been charged with writing a new constitution. It is possible, too, that the targeting of Mr de Mello was connected with his role as UN head of operations in East Timor, the liberation of which from Indonesian occupation is one more source of the resentment that the Islamist fanatics harbour against the West.

It also illustrates that, contrary to the argument of some of those who opposed the war in Iraq, the recovery process would likely be just as difficult and obstacle-strewn if the UN, rather than the US, were in charge. Those who think that the terrorists have some sort of respect for the authority of the UN are hard-pressed to explain why, for example, al-Qa'ida was caught plotting to blow up the UN General Assembly building in the mid-1990s. In the videotape broadcast on Al-Jazeera satellite television on November 3, 2001, Osama bin Laden railed against the UN as "nothing but a tool of crime" and the source of Muslim suffering and humiliation.

While the perpetrators of the Baghdad bombing are unknown, there is no doubt that the presence of US troops in Iraq, combined with its porous borders, make the country a magnet for terrorist groups, including al-Qa'ida. It is also well within the al-Qa'ida modus operandi to shift the focus of attacks away from military targets, and onto civilian targets and infrastructure: make ordinary Iraqi's suffer enough, and they will lose confidence in those who are trying to help them.

There is no point in muddying the responsibility for such outrages, as both the Democrats and Greens did yesterday as part of their increasingly unseemly struggle over the fringe vote. For Greens leader Bob Brown and Australian Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett to say that the bombing would not have happened if Australia, Britain, and the US had not joined forces to topple Saddam Hussein is disgraceful, because it is code for the suggestion that we, and not the terrorists, are to blame for Mr de Mello's death, and the other victims. Would senators Brown and Bartlett prefer an Iraq that was still operating as Saddam Hussein's personal charnel-house? Rather than blaming the US, our best efforts must be directed towards ensuring that, with an election year looming, there is no temptation for President Bush to cut and run before the job in Iraq is complete. And the best way we do that is by offering our full support, and maintaining our modest military involvement.

The bomb in Jerusalem was just as devastating, driving what may be the final nail into the coffin of the seven-week-old ceasefire. Several extremist groups have stepped forward to claim responsibility. Their argument that the bombing is a justified retaliation for Israel's ongoing attacks on their own commanders is totally without force. Attacks on Israelis have slowed, not stopped, since the ceasefire. If the Israeli Government has a bead on terrorist ringleaders plotting mayhem, how can it be expected to do nothing? There is no equivalence between that and randomly blowing up a bus whose passengers include women, children and babies.

Humoured by his fans worldwide, including among the membership of the EU, Yasser Arafat clearly has no intention of going quietly, and letting Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas pursue the road map to peace. If Arafat told the militants to disarm, they would. But as long as there is an armed militia for every Palestinian faction, rather than a single force under the authority of the Palestinian Authority government, the road map will be one step forward – and then a bomb, blowing everything back into ruins.

If terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah (JI) wanted to tell the world that it was still alive and active, no message could have been clearer than today's car bomb in Jakarta.

The bomb, which killed at least 10 and injured more than 100, ripped through the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta's new diplomatic district,
The timing left little doubt about the motives.

NO one really thought the monster was dead. It had taken many hits, its leaders locked away and its membership scattered, but Indonesia's gathering nightmare – Jemaah Islamiah – has outed itself as a beast far more resilient than even the best terrorist chasers had realised.

While JI has not put its hand up for the destruction at the Marriott hotel, there is little doubt in the minds of those who know it that Abu Bakar Bashir's band of militant Islamic radicals was responsible.

JI has never owned up to its previous attacks, being content to ride out the blame game while offering flat denials.

But the calling cards are unmistakably there. The lunchtime bomb, a massive high-explosive device concealed in an Indonesian-built Kijang, was designed for mass destruction. The target was an affluent, multinational hotel where dignitaries, wealthy Westerners and locals were sitting down to banquets. Next door, US and Australian diplomats and businessmen regularly gathered for meetings. But there were another two, more compelling reasons to focus suspicion. This week is rich in both symbolism and infamy for JI. Yesterday, former spiritual leader Bashir gave evidence at his own treason trial, in which he said killing could be justified under his interpretation of jihad. The bomb exploded less than two hours later.

Just as significant is the verdict expected tomorrow of the first person charged with the Bali bombings, Amrozi, an acolyte of Bashir and brother of two of the organisation's most important figures, Mukhlas and Ali Imron.

Amrozi is on the verge of a death sentence – so is a large swath of 38 of his cohorts rounded up after the Bali attack. They include three one- time heads of JI's four regions, Mukhlas, Mustafa and Mohammed Nazir bin Abbas – and the man who replaced Bashir after his arrest, Abdul Risduan. Also among them are senior bombmakers and henchmen.

But clearly, that has not diminished the group's capabilities. Despite the arrests, the heat from police and the heightened security around the capital, the bombers could still make this device and sneak it through to the heart of a prime target.

The take from this is that JI, the one-time sewing circle of like-minded Islamic radicals, is far more operationally ready, mobile and self-contained than regional police and spies had expected.

Like a multi-headed serpent, it is capable of maintaining momentum, focus and expertise despite its senior leadership being taken down.

There are still known to be nine senior figures on the run, among them Bali bombmakers Dr Azahari and Dulmatin and regional terror kingpin Hambali.

But of even more concern are the whereabouts of hundreds of others, who like, Ali Imron and many of the Bali bombers, also earned their terror stripes in Afghanistan.

The Australian Prime Minister has said "The leaders of North Korea are facing a fateful choice. They can continue the tentative steps they have made towards constructive engagement with the world, towards a peaceful solution on a Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons, and towards a brighter future for its people. Or they can choose the perilous path of confrontation and nuclear blackmail, sustaining their impoverished state through trafficking drugs and weapons, and further deepening their isolation."

It is an evil world. North Korea is a regime that is comprehensively an anachronism has paradoxically become an inescapable portent of a bloody future. North Korea poses a threat. The CIA believe that North Korea is developing the ability to miniaturise its nuclear weapons so it could put them on missiles. Previously, it was thought that North Korea possessed at most three crude nuclear devices, which were too big and clumsy to be put on missiles. If these were ever to be used, they would need to be dropped from aeroplanes. If the North Koreans developed the technology to put nuclear weapons on missiles, they would be able to threaten all of Japan with nuclear devastation. The CIA also believes the North Koreans have developed a site at Youngdoktong for testing explosives that would detonate the miniaturised devices. While the North Koreans are working on ballistic missiles that could reach the US and northern Australia, they already have missiles that can reliably reach Japan. Meanwhile, they possess, in 8000 spent nuclear fuel rods, enough plutonium for another half-dozen nuclear weapons. They have restarted the reactor at Yongbyon, which will also provide new weapons grade plutonium, and they have a uranium enrichment program, which will also produce weapons material, using small centrifuges that are hard to detect. North Korea has captured a single essential truth about the future, that governing regimes will be more secure, no matter how monstrous they are in other respects, if they possess nuclear weapons.

What can we possibly do? What are the alternatives? The US and its allies really only have three basic options on North Korea.
ƒ{ The first is the traditional one ¡V reward Pyongyang for its nuclear delinquency, bribe it into abandoning its nuclear ambitions. It is still the preferred option of every policy maker in Washington and Canberra. The problem is North Korea took the bribes but kept building the weapons anyway.
ƒ{ The second choice is a pre-emptive military strike on North Korea's nuclear facilities at Yongbyon. The Pentagon has examined and re-examined this very seriously. The problem is Pyongyang's power of retaliation, which resides not so much in its nuclear weapons, but in its artillery. This is nestled into the hills just north of the border with South Korea. War on the Korean Peninsula would be catastrophic.
ƒ{ The third policy choice for the US and its allies in the end is to do nothing: to huff and puff diplomatically but simply learn to live with a nuclear North Korea.
This is the most likely outcome. Ponder what it really means. No one can know for sure how much nuclear capacity Pyongyang really has. As well as its reactor at Yongbyon, and the 8000 spent fuel rods with all their plutonium, it also has a uranium enrichment program. And, of course, it is developing ever-longer range missiles. So much destructive capacity in such a dangerous and at times mad regime is profoundly disturbing in its own right, but much worse is the implication for proliferation. North Korea makes $US1 billion to $2 billion ($1.5 billion to $3 billion) a year smuggling missiles, weapons of mass destruction technology and drugs. This is its main source of hard currency.

Eventually, if it is producing a lot of plutonium, Pyongyang will sell some of it. There is not an intelligence analyst in the world who does not believe Iran is seeking nuclear weapons and, with its extensive nuclear power industry, is already far advanced towards their production. Libya and Syria are almost inevitable customers. Though it is mere common sense to try to interdict North Korean shipments of WMD materials, plutonium could be easily transferred in planes. Proliferation will be impossible to stop.

If North Korea survives this testing period and becomes an established nuclear weapons state the pressure on Japan and South Korea to follow suit would be overwhelming. Eventually, over perhaps a decade or two, the world will be transformed into one in which most big states have nuclear weapons. Trying to prevent leakage of weapons to terrorists then would be Sisyphean.

Outside factors might save us in North Korea. The regime might collapse. China might prevail on Pyongyang not to go all the way in nuclear matters. But China's interests are not quite ours. It does not want Japan and South Korea to go nuclear in reaction to Pyongyang doing so, but this could be achieved either by getting North Korea to give up its nuclear program or simply by recreating a Clintonian fudge, with Pyongyang taking the bribes but keeping its program going clandestinely.

The death of Saddam Hussein's two eldest sons in the northern city of Mosul is the best news Washington and its allies have had out of Iraq since the war formally ended three months ago.

But given the resistance the United States is meeting as it ploughs towards its professed goal of a democratic, federal, multiethnic Iraq, it may be the last good news for some time.

The departure of the Hussein brothers is a good thing because of their atrocious records and because, it's hoped, it may reduce attacks on the occupation forces and hence US casualties. Because of their potential impact on domestic opinion, American casualties have the capacity to sap US determination to stay the course in Iraq for what may be the four or five years necessary to establish a democracy.

But even if the deaths of Qusay and Uday do dampen Ba'athist Party resistance, the fact that their father remains at large means the last stand in Mosul is only one more step in the campaign to destroy Saddam Hussein's power - which wasn't even expected to survive the end of the war proper.

And while an imperative, the de-Ba'athification of Iraq is still only preparation for the far more ambitious project, the construction of a new Iraqi polity.

Last week the occupying authorities took a first step by unveiling the somewhat misleadingly titled Iraqi Governing Council.

Given Saddam Hussein's poisonous legacy of ethnic conflict between Arabs and Kurds and sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites, hopes that social and economic structures could be rapidly erected have proved optimistic.

The hand-picked IGC - which includes a significant number of Shiites - is realistically the most representative body Iraqis are likely to get in the near future.

But, the fact that hardline Shiite clerics have rejected the IGC is an indication of the difficulties ahead.

Meanwhile although George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard are doubtless jubilant at the unexpected news from Iraq, the death of the brothers does nothing to clear the air over the role of the intelligence services in the rush to war.

The Bush administration has found a partial solution in the acceptance of responsibility by a mid-level official for use of the discredited Niger uranium information, and Mr Blair is flying home to face the Hutton inquiry.

But until the question of accountability over the use of dubious material is resolved in what was essentially an information campaign against Baghdad, efforts by Washington, London and Canberra to convince the international community of their bona fides will remain under a cloud.

So they haven’t found weapons of mass destruction but in the light of those mass graves, how is it now possible to say this war should not have been fought?
Following the fall of Baghdad two months ago, there was some unseemly gloating from the pro-war lobby. I deliberately didn't join in this, in print or in private, even though I had supported the war, because while (in my opinion) war is sometimes necessary it is always horrible, and always represents a failure of the human race.
Having seen the pictures of suffering and destruction as a result of the war, I didn't feel like gloating. What I could feel was relief that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was accomplished without the predicted 100,000 dead, without the predicted millions of refugees and without the predicted massive environmental damage. Relief, too, because - notwithstanding the chaos they are now enduring and the resentment many feel towards the occupying Americans and British - the vast majority of Iraqis were and are glad to have been freed. Seeing how badly the war coalition has underestimated the difficulties of the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Iraq, I find it still very hard to feel like gloating. But not so hard, apparently, for some on the anti-war side, who have seized on the fact that, so far, no significant evidence of weapons of mass destruction has been found. Does not this prove what they always knew, that they were right? Throughout this debate, protesters against the war have claimed the high moral ground. The casual, automatic assumption has been that all right-thinking (meaning left-leaning) people would oppose the war, and if you didn't oppose it you were simply not on the side of right (not one of us).
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Yes, much has gone wrong in Iraq. But what's gone right is that Iraqi people are no longer being killed and tortured, Iraqi children are not being thrown in jail and people are free. What's gone right is that the world's cruellest tyrant has gone, apparently from the face of the earth. Of course, if intelligence about Iraq's ability to use weapons of mass destruction was exaggerated to provide legal justification for war, if governments lied, they should be held to account. But even if it turns out that the legal basis for the war was flawed, there was always a strong moral justification. The humanitarian reason was the one on which the war coalition should have relied. Indeed, in not relying on it they probably underestimated their publics. Many people who initially opposed the war simply did not know the extent of the atrocities carried out by Saddam's regime. Now, as the stories of torture and disappearances are told, as the graves of thousands of executed Iraqi people are found, everyone does know. It was always possible, before the war, to argue for or against it in good faith. Those who believe the absence of weapons of mass destruction proves the war on Iraq was wrong may have a more proper appreciation of the legality of things than I have. But I do not see, in the light of those mass graves, how it is now possible to say this war should not have been fought. It is time the idea that dictators can use the shield of national sovereignty in order to commit atrocities against their own people was overturned. (Isn't this what the left used to lobby for?) And now that there is one less dictator in the world, the United Nations, which failed to find the will to take effective international action against Saddam Hussein, should think very hard on what might be done - hopefully short of war - about assorted tyrants in Zimbabwe and Burma.

You don't have to be a particularly good person to think that war is bad. Nearly everyone would agree that it is. But as the founder of Medicins Sans Frontieres, Bernard Kouchner (a socialist), said of the action in Iraq, what is worse than war is for the international community to leave in place a dictator who massacres his people.

As soon as the new Middle East peace initiative was announced, it was clear that violence by its opponents would follow. Less clear was whether those who have backed the road map would have the political courage to withstand the assault.

The deadliest blows so far have come from Palestinian terrorists. Yesterday, a Hamas suicide bomber killed at least 16 people and wounded nearly 100 on a rush-hour bus in central Jerusalem.

But the gravest political damage is being done by Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, whose reflexive military responses to terror threatens to undermine the authority of Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate new Palestinian prime minister. Ignoring strong pleas from Washington, Mr. Sharon has now twice ordered Israeli forces to rocket cars carrying suspected Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

Challenging the new Palestinian leadership to take over security responsibility for Gaza is one of the first concrete tests of the road map. Sending in Israeli forces as if nothing had changed needlessly damages the credibility of Mr. Abbas and of the whole Bush peace plan. If it is not evident to Mr. Sharon by now that military reprisals alone can never bring Israel security from suicide bombers, the White House must do all it can to help him understand.

Nobody expects Israel to tolerate terror against its people. But terror can be more effectively rooted out if responsible Palestinian leaders like Mr. Abbas are strengthened, not undermined. It is easy to see why Hamas would like to make Mr. Abbas look irrelevant. But Israel should be doing all it can to strengthen his hand because in the long run that is in Israel's own interest.

For years, Israelis rightly complained about Yasir Arafat's equivocating attitude toward terrorism. The Bush administration has acted on those complaints and worked hard to marginalize Mr. Arafat. As a result, a far more credible figure, Mr. Abbas, is now the Palestinian prime minister. Meeting with Mr. Bush and Mr. Sharon in Jordan last week, Mr. Abbas bravely uttered the unambiguous words Mr. Arafat seemed chronically unable to pronounce. He renounced "terror against the Israelis wherever they may be," a phrase that included soldiers and settlers. Such forthright language was encouraging, though language alone will not be enough. Now Mr. Abbas must be given a chance to follow up his words with effective police action.

The obvious place for him to start is Gaza, where Hamas is based and where the Palestinian Authority's security forces are strongest. To build a Palestinian political consensus against terror, Mr. Abbas needs to show his people that his conciliatory words have brought a change in Israeli behavior. Regrettably, Mr. Sharon's latest actions demonstrate just the opposite.