PLO arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat is apparently back on stage, following his meeting yesterday with German Foreign Minister Joschke Fischer. After hosting Fischer in his all-but-destroyed Mukata compound in Ramallah where he has been holed up for over a year, Arafat said that there is an international consensus that the Road Map plan will be publicized "within a number of days." He said that he and Abu Mazen, "my brother and my beloved," are "working together" to form a new PA government.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, another European leader who opposed the war in Iraq, reportedly said that he welcomed the sights from Baghdad as a sign that the conflict would be over soon.